New approaches to chromatin function.

Our current knowledge of chromatin structure raises the major issue of the accessibility of DNA to the proteins involved in macromolecular processes such as replication, recombination, and transcription. Recent genetic and biochemical analyses have both proven that chromatin structure plays a role in specifically repressing the initiation of transcription of several genes and suggested how this repression might be overcome in vivo. Such progress in understanding how genes are transcribed in a chromatin environment provides us with important insights into the means by which specific protein-DNA interactions occur within the nucleus.