Nuclear receptors for thyroid hormone: evidence for nonrandom distribution within chromatin.

Chromatin receptor proteins appear to mediate some actions of thyroid hormone. In this study, sheared mammalian chromatin containing [125I]triiodothyronine (T3) bound by these receptors was separated using sucrose gradient velocity sedimentation. T3-receptor complexes were distributed throughout the chromatin fractions, but were enriched in the slowly sedimenting fractions. The latter contain most of the template capacity for RNA synthesis and most of the endogenous RNA polymerase activity but a minor portion of the total DNA. Formaldehyde treatment of chromatin containing receptor-bound [125 I ]T3 resulted in fixation of radioactivity, as evidenced by its migration with chromatin after equilibrium density gradient sedimentation in both cesium chloride and Conray. This fixation implies that the T3 receptor protein is closely associated with chromatin. These results suggest that proteins involved in the regulation of gene function may be nonrandomly distributed within chromatin subfractions, and are consistent with a direct role for thyroid hormone in regulating genetic expression.