Generalized electrostatic model of the wrapping of DNA around oppositely charged proteins.

Histonelike proteins in prokaryotes and histone octamers in eukaryotes carry large positive charges, which are responsible of strong electrostatic interactions with DNA. As a result, DNA wraps around proteins and genetic information is condensed. We describe a generalized model of these electrostatic interactions mediated by salt that explains the wrapping of DNA around the nucleosome octamer, around remodeling factors in eukaryotes and around histonelike proteins in prokaryotes. It comes out that small changes in protein dimension and charge produce large effects in the supramolecular DNA-protein architecture. Copyright 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.