Seminar - Federica Battistini

Federica Batisttini, a post-doc candidate for Roderic's lab is giving a seminar on Feb 1 at 10:00 h at room Aula (473.10).

Sequence Selectivity of DNA Wrapping in the Nucleosome

 Federica Battistini

 The nucleosome is one of the most fundamentally important of all protein-DNA complexes. We examined the high-resolution nucleosome crystal structure [1] and identified roll as the most important parameter in determining DNA bending in nucleosome. We developed a structural model that accurately predicts the details of local conformational changes associated with DNA bending, as well as the resulting strain energy. This method successfully identifies the high affinity sequences experimentally selected in vitro by Widom [2] in a large library of random sequences.  The  method  successfully  distinguishes  the  high  affinity  sequences  discovered  by Widom and measured using his dialysis competition assay. Furthermore the precise location of the nucleosome complex matches the experimentally determined position on the Widom sequences to within five bases and successful provide a reliable analysis of the nucleosome landscape in genomic DNA. 

[1] T J Richmond & C A Davey, Nature, 423, 145-150 (2003). 

[2] J Widom, Quart Rev Biophys, 34, 269-324 (2001). 

[3] A Thastrom, L M Bingman & J Widom, J Mol Biol, 338, 695-709 (2004).