The Arabidopsis Adh gene exhibits diverse nucleosome arrangements within a small DNase I-sensitive domain

The alcohol dehydrogenase (Adh) gene from Arabidopsis shows enhanced sensitivity to DNase I in cells that express the gene. This generalized sensitivity to DNase I is demarcated by position -500 on the 5' side and the end of the mRNA on the 3' side. Thus, the gene defined as the promoter and mRNA coding region corresponds very closely in size with the gene defined as a nuclease-sensitive domain. This is a remarkably close correspondence between a sensitive domain and a eukaryotic transcriptional unit, because previously reported DNase I-sensitive domains include large regions of DNA that are not transcribed. Nucleosomes are present in the coding region of the Adh gene when it is expressed, indicating that the transcriptional elongation process causes nucleosome disruption rather than release of nucleosomes from the coding region. In addition, the regulatory region contains a loosely positioned nucleosome that is separated from adjacent nucleosomes by internucleosomic DNA segments longer than the average linker DNA in bulk chromatin. This specific array of nucleosomes coexists with bound transcription factors that could contribute to the organization of the nucleosome arrangement. These results enhance our understanding of the complex interactions among DNA, nucleosomes, and transcription factors during gene expression in plants.