TY - JOUR T1 - Differential Histone-DNA Interactions Dictate Nucleosome Recognition of the Pioneer Transcription Factor Sox JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/2021.12.07.471700 SP - 2021.12.07.471700 AU - Burcu Ozden AU - Ramachandran Boopathi AU - Ayşe Berçin Barlas AU - Imtiaz N. Lone AU - Jan Bednar AU - Carlo Petosa AU - Seyit Kale AU - Ali Hamiche AU - Dimitar Angelov AU - Stefan Dimitrov AU - Ezgi Karaca Y1 - 2021/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2021/12/09/2021.12.07.471700.abstract N2 - Pioneer transcription factors (PTFs) have the remarkable ability to directly bind to chromatin for stimulating vital cellular processes. Expanding on the recent findings, we aim to unravel the universal binding mode of the famous Sox PTF. Our findings show that the base specific hydrogen bonding (base reading) and the local DNA changes (shape reading) are required for sequence-specific nucleosomal DNA recognition by Sox. Among different nucleosomal positions, base and shape reading can be satisfied at super helical location 2 (SHL2). This indicates that due to distinct histone-DNA interactions, SHL2 acts transparently to Sox binding, where SHL4 permits solely shape reading, and SHL0 (dyad) allows no reading. We also show that at SHL2, Sox binds to its recognition sequence without imposing any major conformational changes, if its consensus DNA sequence is located at the solvent-facing nucleosomal DNA strand. These data explain how Sox have evolved to perfectly adapt for chromatin binding.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest. ER -