Fuzziness and noise in nucleosomal architecture

Nucleosome organization plays a key role in the regulation of gene expression. However, despite the striking advances in the accuracy of nucleosome maps, there are still severe discrepancies on individual nucleosome positioning and how this influences gene regulation. The variability among nucleosome maps, which precludes the fine analysis of nucleosome positioning, might emerge from diverse sources. We have carefully inspected the extrinsic factors that may induce diversity by the comparison of MNase-Seq derived nucleosome maps generated under distinct conditions. Furthermore, we have also explored the variation originated from intrinsic nucleosome dynamics by generating additional maps derived from cell cycle synchronized and asynchronized yeast cultures. Taken together, our study has enabled us to measure the effect of noise in nucleosome occupancy and positioning and provides insights into the underlying determinants. Furthermore, we present a systematic approach that may guide the standardization of MNase-Seq experiments in order to generate reproducible genome-wide nucleosome patterns.