Transcriptional repression by nucleosomes but not H1 in reconstituted preblastoderm Drosophila chromatin.

Chromatin reconstituted in an extract from preblastoderm Drosophila embryos represses transcription by RNA polymerase II. We have assembled regularly spaced nucleosomes on DNA attached to paramagnetic beads enabling the efficient purification of chromatin templates for transcription studies. We have used diagnostic salt extractions to establish that transcriptional repression of immobilized chromatin was largely due to nucleosome cores. When purified H1 was incorporated into chromatin, resulting in increased repeat lengths to 200-220 bp, the contribution of H1 to transcriptional repression was negligible. If more H1 was added no regularly spaced chromatin was obtained and only under these conditions was transcriptional inhibition by H1 apparent. We conclude that efficient repression of transcription by polymerase II in this system does not require the presence of histone H1.