[The effect of DNA supercoiling DNA on nucleosome structure]

The circular DNA which contains nucleosomes and additional supercoils has been considered theoretically. The different possible effect of increased negative supercoiling on the nucleosome structure have been studied. According to the model proposed all supercoils in the nucleosome-containing circular DNA are realized as torsional deformations of the double helix. The free energy of both supercoiling (torsional deformations) and nucleosome stabilization have been taken into consideration to obtain the equation for free energy of nucleosome-containing circular DNA. The analysis of this equation and the experimental data by Garner et al. (II Psoc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 1987. P. 2620-2623) about the maximum amount of supercoiling obtained by DNA-topoisomerase II treatment of nucleosome-containing pBR322 plasmid has been performed. It has been shown that two possibilities are consistent with both the equation and experimental data. These are: (1) the increased supercoiling induces the torsional strains not only in linker regions but also in nucleosome DNA and thus supercoiling causes an instability on nucleosome structure; (2) increased supercoiling induces a structural change of nucleosome which is accompanied by nucleosome DNA unwinding and its transition into form with approximately 11 base pairs per turn of double helix. It has been evaluated that in the first case the average torsional rigidity of nucleosome DNA should be approximately 2.5 times as much and in the second case--much more than the rigidity of naked DNA. Both types of nucleosome structural changes may cause its transition to a potentially active state for transcription. It is suggested that increased supercoiling can be a switch mechanism of chromatin activation.