“...the proposal that the genomic sequence itself may encode part of the information of where nucleosomes will be positioned generated considerable interest.”

Research from many different directions led people to work on nucleosomes as important determinants of gene regulation and chromosome function, and it was soon realized that the detailed positions of nucleosomes along genomes is critical for these activities. Thus, the proposal that the genomic sequence itself may encode part of the information of where nucleosomes will be positioned generated considerable interest.

Many of these ideas were floating around in the community for quite some time. Researchers noted that nucleosomes have varying preferences for specific DNA sequences, and that some of these distinctive sequence preferences could be seen in statistical analyses in whole eukaryotic genome sequences. However, the extent to which such sequence preferences were ubiquitous around genomes and what functional role they may play was unclear. Our work shed some light on these questions.

Scientists are working to understand how different cells develop their distinctive character. Similarly, scientists seek to understand how cancerous or disease cells differ from healthy cells. In each of these cases, the differences between the cells lie in the exact set of genes that are actually utilized by each cell; given all cells have the same genes. Our work focuses on an additional type of genetic information that could help to explain how such differential gene utilization may be achieved.

  Where do you see your research leading in the future?

The rate of progress in this field in the past couple of years has been breathtaking. Many researchers are producing large amounts of new data that then entail exciting new discoveries. It is thus hard to predict exactly where the research will go, but it is our belief that we will collectively understand much better the details of how genomes encode the positions of their nucleosomes, and what functional consequences such an encoding has.