Recently, the research group of Prof. HUANG Qing from the Institute of Intelligent Machines (IIM) at Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) and the research group of Dr. ZHANG Fengqiu from Zhengzhou University collaborated to reveal the B-Z conformation transition of DNA in chromatin remodeling through infrared spectroscopy.

In this research, they employed Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) to observe and analyze the characteristic peaks related to DNA molecules. It was found that by adjusting the catalytic subunit BRG1/BRM in the chromatin remodeling complex SWI/SNF, chromatin remodeling could be induced and accompanied by the B-Z transition of DNA conformations.

Z-DNA is difficult to be observed in cells in spite of the increasing attention paid to it. One of the main reasons is the lack of a simple and reliable method for direct observation of DNA conformation changes. A potential way is chromatin remodeling, one of the important aspects of epigenetics. In the process of chromatin remodeling, the interaction between histone and DNA varies, which may lead to the change of DNA conformations.

Previous study by Prof. HUANG's group, in which they found acetylation of histone can cause Z-DNA transformation, also applied infrared spectroscopy. This time, they not only used the same method to study the DNA conformation transition in ATP dependent chromatin remodeling but also verified this conformation transition additionally by Chromatin Immunoprecipitation (ChIP) technology. Therefore, on the other hand, this work also proved the reliability of infrared spectroscopy to characterize the Z-DNA in cells.

The above research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

Link to the paper: Remodeling Chromatin Induces Z-DNA Conformation Detected through Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy
 

Fig. 1. Schematic plot illustrating that chromatin remodeling by regulating BRG1/BRM in the cells may induce B-Z DNA transformation which can be examined by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). (Image by Yalin Li)

Contact:

ZHAO Weiwei
Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (http://english.hf.cas.cn/)
Email: annyzhao@ipp.ac.cn