Establishment and Function of Chromatin Organization at Replication Origins

The Origin Recognition Complex (ORC) is essential for the initiation of eukaryotic chromosome replication as it loads the replicative helicase, the minichromosome maintenance (MCM) complex, at replication origins. Origins display a stereotypic chromatin structure with nucleosome depletion at ORC binding sites and flanking arrays of regularly spaced nucleosomes. Although discovered long ago, it is unknown how this chromatin struture is established and if it matters for replication. By genome-scale biochemical reconstitution we screened ~300 origins and 17 purified budding yeast chromatin factors and found that ORC established nucleosome depletion over origins and flanking nucleosome arrays by orchestrating the chromatin remodelers INO80, ISW1a, ISW2 and Chd1. The functional importance of ORC’s chromatin organizing activity was directly demonstrated by ORC mutations that maintained classical MCM loader activity but lost array generation activity. These mutations impaired replication through chromatin in vitro and were lethal in vivo. Our results establish that ORC, besides its canonical role as MCM loader, has a second essential function as master regulator of the origin chromatin structure that is a crucial prerequisite for efficient chromosome replication. We in vitro reconstituted the chromatin landscape of origins of replication with purified components. We used in vivo and in vitro approaches to show that ORC is a master regulator of this process and that regular spaced nucleosomal arrays are important for replication efficiency.