Insights Into the Chromatin Structure of Thermoplasma volcanium: Archaeal HU Regulates Alba-Mediated DNA Compaction

Archaeal species encode a diversity of chromatin proteins that play distinct roles in genome compaction. Although our understanding of the individual proteins has been growing, their contributions to higher-order folding in the archaeal chromosome remain to be explored. In this study, we investigate...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inArchaea (Vancouver) Vol. 2024
Main Authors Aycardo, Kirk Amerigo B, Prieto, Eloise I
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York John Wiley & Sons, Inc 14.08.2024
Hindawi Limited
Subjects
Amino acids
Atomic force microscopy
Chromatids
Chromatin
Chromatography
Chromosomes
Compaction
Deoxyribonucleic acid
DNA
DNA binding proteins
DNA methylation
DNA structure
DNA topoisomerase
DNA-binding protein
E coli
Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid
Folding
Genomes
Genomics
Histone H1
Histones
Microscopy
Nucleic acids
Protein expression
Protein folding
Proteins
Ribonucleic acid
RNA
RNA-binding protein
Room temperature
Thermoplasma volcanium
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Summary:Archaeal species encode a diversity of chromatin proteins that play distinct roles in genome compaction. Although our understanding of the individual proteins has been growing, their contributions to higher-order folding in the archaeal chromosome remain to be explored. In this study, we investigated the chromatin structure of Thermoplasma volcanium, a euryarchaeon that encodes a heat-unstable (HU) family protein (HUTvo) instead of histones. Atomic force microscopy revealed that the T. volcanium chromatin contains nucleoprotein structures of progressively increasing sizes, from 20nm filaments to ~50nm globules, indicative of higher-order DNA folding. In vitro reconstitution showed that HUTvo wraps DNA similar to histones and forms highly compact yet disorganized nucleoprotein clusters on its own. Remarkably, HUTvo only dampens the formation of higher-order structures by Alba. Our results provide an insight into how the interplay of chromatin proteins regulates genome compaction in histone-free archaea.
ISSN:1472-3646
1472-3654
DOI:10.1155/2024/5997336