We present an analysis of chromatin fiber structure across the human genome. Compact and open chromatin fiber structures were separated by sucrose sedimentation and their distributions analyzed by hybridization to metaphase chromosomes and genomic microarrays. We show that compact chromatin fibers originate from some sites of heterochromatin (C-bands), and G-bands (euchromatin). Open chromatin ...

Background: Acrylamid (AA) is found in carbohydraterich foods that are prepared at high temperatures, such as French fries and potato chips. The toxic effects of AA in male animals include degeneration of epithelial cells of seminiferous tubules, decreased number of sperm and elevation in abnormal spermatozoa. The aim of this study was to evaluate the detrimental effects of AA on sperm paramete...

Chromosome condensation is essential for the faithful transmission of genetic information to daughter cells during cell division. The depletion of chromosome scaffold proteins does not prevent chromosome condensation despite structural defects. This suggests that other factors contribute to condensation. Here we investigated the contribution of divalent cations, particularly Ca2+, to chromosome...

By observing reconstituted chromatin by fluorescence microscopy (FM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM), we found that the density of nucleosomes exhibits a bimodal profile, i.e., there is a large transition between the dense and dispersed states in reconstituted chromatin. Based on an analysis of the spatial distribution of nucleosome cores, we deduced an effective thermodynamic potential as a ...

The DNA microarray-based technique has been developed to semi-quantitatively measure the in vivo global chromatin condensation state at the resolution of a gene. Chromatin was fractionated due to the differential solubility of histone H1-containing and histone H1-free nucleosomes. A set of genes non-randomly distributed between histone H1-free (uncondensed or open) and histone H1-containing (co...