DNAase I sensitivities in chromatin of the Xenopus laevis somatic and oocyte 5 S DNAs.

The DNAase I sensitivities of the somatic-type 5 S DNA and oocyte-type 5 S DNA have been compared in nuclei from adult somatic tissues of Xenopus laevis. Neither of these Type III genes is expressed in mature erythrocytes and only somatic-type 5 S DNA is expressed in liver. We find that somatic-type 5 S DNA is DNAase-I-sensitive in liver nuclei and less sensitive in erythrocyte nuclei, while oocyte-type 5 S DNA is insensitive in both tissues. The DNAase I sensitivity appears to be uniform across each active somatic-type 5 S DNA repeat. Two regions slightly hypersensitive to DNAase I are found only in liver somatic-type 5 S DNA. One of these regions is within the gene, overlapping with the binding site of the transcription factor (TF III A) required for 5 S RNA synthesis. Thus, the correlation between DNAase I sensitivity and gene activity previously seen for protein-coding genes also holds for these Type III genes. Our data lead us to suggest that the fully DNAase-I-sensitive chromatin conformation on 5 S DNA requires the presence both of transcription factors and RNA polymerase.