Preferential localization of variant nucleosomes near the 5'-end of the mouse dihydrofolate reductase gene.

We have probed the structure of nucleosomes within the 31-kilobase pair long, transcriptionally active gene for dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR) in mouse cells which contain multiple copies of the DHFR gene. We found that the distribution of electrophoretically variant nucleosomes within the DHFR gene is highly nonuniform: variant DHFR nucleosomes are abundant within and in the immediate vicinity of the approximately 200-base pair (bp) long first DHFR exon, and decrease by at least 10-fold within two nucleosomes upstream and downstream from this region. The nonuniformly distributed variant DHFR mononucleosomes are of two electrophoretically distinguishable discrete types. One corresponds to a mononucleosome containing a approximately 180-bp DNA fragment and possibly also histone H1 and high mobility group proteins. The other type of variant DHFR mononucleosome contains a approximately 146-bp DNA fragment, and its changes in relative content within the DHFR gene closely parallel those of the 180-bp variant mononucleosome. Several lines of evidence are consistent with the interpretation that the electrophoretically variant approximately 146-bp (core) mononucleosome species corresponds to diubiquitinated DHFR nucleosomes. We discuss possible causal relationships between the observed nonuniform distribution of variant nucleosomes within the DHFR gene and the DHFR gene transcription.