A matter of packaging: influence of nucleosome positioning on heterologous gene expression

The organization of DNA into the various levels of chromatin compaction is the main obstacle that restricts the access of transcriptional machinery to genes. Genome-wide chromatin analyses have shown that there are common chromatin organization patterns for most genes but have also revealed important differences in nucleosome positioning throughout the genome. Such chromatin heterogeneity is one of the reasons why recombinant gene expression is highly dependent on integration sites. Different solutions have been tested for this problem, including artificial targeting of chromatin-modifying factors or the addition of DNA elements, which efficiently counteract the influence of the chromatin environment.An influence of the chromatin configuration of the recombinant gene itself on its transcriptional behavior has also been established. This view is especially important for heterologous genes since the general parameters of chromatin organization change from one species to another. The chromatin organization of bacterial DNA proves particularly dramatic when introduced into eukaryotes. The nucleosome positioning of recombinant genes is the result of the interaction between the machinery of the hosting cell and the sequences of both the recombinant genes and the promoter regions. We discuss the key aspects of this phenomenon from the heterologous gene expression perspective.