Back

Molecular architecture of heterochromatin at the nuclear periphery of primary human cells

Kreysing, J. P.; Cruz-Leon, S.; Betz, J.; Penzo, C.; Majtner, T.; Schreiber, M.; Turonova, B.; Lusic, M.; Hummer, G.; Beck, M.

2025-04-10 biophysics
10.1101/2025.04.09.647790 bioRxiv
Show abstract

In eukaryotes, meters of DNA are packaged into micrometer scale nuclei. Nucleosomes, as the major organizational unit, have been extensively studied in vitro, yet the elaborate 3D structure of chromatin inside cells and its distinct multi-nucleosome arrangements remain poorly resolved. Here, we combine cryo-electron tomography with template matching, subtomogram averaging and molecular simulations to visualize nucleosomes and chromatin structure inside human cells. We confidently assign individual nucleosomes and report their in-situ structure at secondary structure resolution. By tracing linker DNA, we identify multi-nucleosome arrangements and uncover higher-order chromatin structures in situ, including a 37-nm wide, elongated but non-fibrous arrangement. In situ structural biology thus reveals the molecular chromatin organization inside cells and sets the stage for 3D genomics.

Published in Nature Communications (predicted rank #1) · training set

Matching journals

The top 2 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.