Nucleosome positioning patterns derived from human apoptotic nucleosomes.

This communication reports on the nucleosome positioning patterns (bendability matrices) for the human genome, derived from over 8_million nucleosome DNA sequences obtained from apoptotically digested lymphocytes. This digestion procedure is used here for the first time for the purpose of extraction and sequencing of the nucleosome DNA fragments. The dominant motifs suggested by the matrices of DNA bendability calculated for light and heavy isochores are significantly different. Both, however, are in full agreement with the linear description YRRRRRYYYYYR, and with earlier derivations by N-gram extensions. Thus, the choice of the nucleosome positioning patterns crucially depends on the G + C composition of the analyzed sequences.