Premium
Nucleosome‐remodelling machines and other molecular motors observed at the single‐molecule level
Author(s) -
Lavelle Christophe,
Praly Elise,
Bensimon David,
Le Cam Eric,
Croquette Vincent
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
the febs journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.981
H-Index - 204
eISSN - 1742-4658
pISSN - 1742-464X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1742-4658.2011.08280.x
Subject(s) - nucleosome , magnetic tweezers , chromatin , molecular motor , molecular machine , optical tweezers , nanotechnology , decipher , biophysics , dna , chromatin remodeling , chemistry , computational biology , biology , microbiology and biotechnology , physics , genetics , materials science , quantum mechanics
Through its capability to transiently pack and unpack our genome, chromatin is a key player in the regulation of gene expression. Single‐molecule approaches have recently complemented conventional biochemical and biophysical techniques to decipher the complex mechanisms ruling chromatin dynamics. Micromanipulations with tweezers (magnetic or optical) and imaging with molecular microscopy (electron or atomic force) have indeed provided opportunities to handle and visualize single molecules, and to measure the forces and torques produced by molecular motors, along with their effects on DNA or nucleosomal templates. By giving access to dynamic events that tend to be blurred in traditional biochemical bulk experiments, these techniques provide critical information regarding the mechanisms underlying the regulation of gene activation and deactivation by nucleosome and chromatin structural changes. This minireview describes some single‐molecule approaches to the study of ATP‐consuming molecular motors acting on DNA, with applications to the case of nucleosome‐remodelling machines.