Global motions in the nucleosome explored using a coarse-grained model

The nucleosome is the basic compacting unit of chromatin, a complex structure that enablesDNA to fit in the eucaryotic cell nucleus. Because many biological processes require free DNA as a substrate, the nucleosome has to undergo conformational transitions to allow the DNA target sites to be exposed. To obtain insight into the global dynamics of the nucleosome, microsecond timescale coarse-grained molecular dynamics is performed. Here we report a principal component analysis (PCA) realised on a 5?s coarse-grained molecular dynamics trajectory to identify the global motions obtained in the nucleosome.