TY  - GEN
A1  - Teif, Vladimir B.
A1  - Cherstvy, Andrey G.
T1  - Chromatin and epigenetics: current biophysical views
T2  - AIMS biophysics
N2  - Recent advances in high-throughput sequencing experiments and their theoretical descriptions have determined fast dynamics of the "chromatin and epigenetics" field, with new concepts appearing at high rate. This field includes but is not limited to the study of DNA-protein-RNA interactions, chromatin packing properties at different scales, regulation of gene expression and protein trafficking in the cell nucleus, binding site search in the crowded chromatin environment and modulation of physical interactions by covalent chemical modifications of the binding partners. The current special issue does not pretend for the full coverage of the field, but it rather aims to capture its development and provide a snapshot of the most recent concepts and approaches. Eighteen open-access articles comprising this issue provide a delicate balance between current theoretical and experimental biophysical approaches to uncover chromatin structure and understand epigenetic regulation, allowing free flow of new ideas and preliminary results.
KW  - chromatin
KW  - epigenetics
KW  - linker histones
KW  - nucleosome
KW  - DNA-protein binding
KW  - histone modifications
KW  - remodelers
KW  - topologically associated domains
KW  - DNA methylation
KW  - DNA supercoiling
Y1  - 2016
U6  - https://doi.org/10.3934/biophy.2016.1.88
SN  - 2377-9098
VL  - 3
SP  - 88
EP  - 98
PB  - American Institute of Mathematical Sciences
CY  - Springfield
ER  - 
TY  - JOUR
A1  - Cherstvy, Andrey G.
A1  - Teif, Vladimir B.
T1  - Electrostatic effect of H1-histone protein binding on nucleosome repeat length
JF  - Physical biology : a journal for the fundamental understanding of biological systems
N2  - Within a simple biophysical model we describe the effect of electrostatic binding of H1 histone proteins on the nucleosome repeat length in chromatin. The length of wrapped DNA optimizes its binding energy to the histone core and the elastic energy penalty of DNA wrapping. The magnitude of the effect predicted from our model is in agreement with the systematic experimental data on the linear variation of nucleosome repeat lengths with H1/nucleosome ratio (Woodcock C L et al 2006 Chromos. Res. 14 17-25). We compare our model to the data for different cell types and organisms, with a widely varying ratio of bound H1 histones per nucleosome. We underline the importance of this non-specific histone-DNA charge-balance mechanism in regulating the positioning of nucleosomes and the degree of compaction of chromatin fibers in eukaryotic cells.
KW  - electrostatics
KW  - DNA
KW  - nucleosome
Y1  - 2014
U6  - https://doi.org/10.1088/1478-3975/11/4/044001
SN  - 1478-3967
SN  - 1478-3975
VL  - 11
IS  - 4
PB  - IOP Publ. Ltd.
CY  - Bristol
ER  -