Abstract
Because histones bind DNA very tightly, the location on DNA and the level of occupancy of a given DNA sequence by nucleosomes can profoundly affect accessibility of non-histone proteins to chromatin, affecting virtually all DNA-dependent processes, such as transcription, DNA repair, DNA replication and recombination. Therefore, it is often necessary to determine positions and occupancy of nucleosomes to understand how DNA-dependent processes are regulated. Recent technological advances made such analyses feasible on a genome-wide scale at high resolution. In addition, we have recently developed a method to measure nuclease accessibility of nucleosomes on a global scale. This unit describes methods to map nucleosome positions, to determine nucleosome density, and to determine nuclease accessibility of nucleosomes using deep sequencing.