Peeling and sliding in nucleosome repositioning.

We investigate the mechanisms of histone sliding and detachment with a stochastic model that couples thermally induced, passive histone sliding with active motor-driven histone unwrapping. Analysis of a passive loop or twist defect-mediated histone sliding mechanism shows that diffusional sliding is enhanced as larger portions of the DNA is peeled off the histone. The mean times to histone detachment and the mean distance traveled by the motor complex prior to histone detachment are computed as functions of the intrinsic speed of the motor. Fast motors preferentially induce detachment over sliding. However, for a fixed motor speed, increasing the histone-DNA affinity (and thereby decreasing the passive sliding rate) increases the mean distance traveled by the motor.