The anatomy of transcriptionally active chromatin loops in Drosophila primary spermatocytes using super-resolution microscopy.

ABSTRACT: While the biochemistry of gene transcription has been well studied, our understanding of how this process is organised in 3D within the intact nucleus is less well understood. Here we investigate the structure of actively transcribed chromatin and the architecture of its interaction with active RNA polymerase. For this analysis, we have used super-resolution microscopy to image the Drosophila melanogaster Y loops which represent huge, several megabases long, single transcription units. The Y loops provide a particularly amenable model system for transcriptionally active chromatin. We find that, although these transcribed loops are decondensed they are not organised as extended 10nm fibres, but rather they largely consist of chains of nucleosome clusters. The average width of each cluster i

SUBMITTER: Ball ML 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10016678 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature