Organization of spacer DNA in chromatin.

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Abstract
Detailed analysis of the DNA fragment patterns produced by DNase I digestion of yeast, HeLa and chicken erythrocyte nuclei reveals surprising features of nucleosome phasing. The spacer regions in phased yeast chromatin must be of lengths (10m + 5) base pairs, where m = 0, 1, 2,.... This feature is not seen in parallel studies of chicken erythrocyte chromatin. The 5-base pair increment in the yeast spacer imposes interesting restraints on the higher order structure of yeast chromatin. It was possible to stimulate the DNase I cutting patterns; good agreement wth the observed yeast patterns was obtained. Three different chromatins show a long range periodicity in the DNase I digest pattern, with a period half that of the staphylococcal nuclease repeat. The amount of chromatin observed in discrete extended-ladder bands is a minimum estimate of phasing and in fact phasing may be a more general feature.