Large-scale Chromatin Structure and Dynamics: a Combined Structural and Molecular Approach

As a means of visualizing large-scale chromatin structure and dynamics our laboratory has used engineered chromosome regions tagged with lac operator repeats [1]. Recent progress in our laboratory focuses on analyzing multi-copy transgene arrays constructed from bacterial artificial chromosomes carrying 100-250 kb insertions of Drosophila or mammalian genomic DNA. These BAC transgene arrays not only recapitulate transcription of model gene loci to within several fold of the endogenous locus but also recapitulate locus specific patterns of large-scale chromatin compaction and intranuclear positioning.