Figure 1

Illustration of two different histone depletion effects. A) An example of a single nucleosome skip. If a nucleosome is dissolved, a blank stretch of DNA will remain. The naked DNA stretches have lengths of multiple integers of the nucleosome repeat length plus the length of a DNA linker and can either lead to a collapse or to a swelling of the chromatin fiber [55]. In both cases they increase the flexibility of the chromatin chain massively. B) An example conformation of a short chromatin fiber with a missing linker histone. The upper strand and the strand below the defect are regular, i.e. the local fiber parameters are fixed. Please note that the fiber is very open to make the visualization clear.