TY - JOUR T1 - Mobile nucleosomes and the accessibility of transcription factors to DNA: a modified dynamic equilibrium model JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/187815 SP - 187815 AU - Hadeel Khamis AU - Sergei Rudnizky AU - Ariel Kaplan Y1 - 2017/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/09/12/187815.1.abstract N2 - Nucleosomes, the basic building block of chromatin, regulate the accessibility of the transcription machinery to DNA. Recent studies have revealed that the nucleosome's spontaneous, thermally driven positional dynamics are modulated by different factors, and exploited by the cell as a regulatory mechanism. In particular, enrichment of mobile nucleosomes at the promoters of genes suggests that the mobility of nucleosomes may affect the ability of transcription factors to bind DNA. However, a quantitative model describing the effect nucleosome mobility on the effective affinity of transcription factors is lacking. We present here a simple equilibrium model that captures the essence of the effect, and show that modulation of the nucleosome's mobility can be a potent and versatile regulator of transcription factor binding. ER -