Global Approaches to Chromatin Review Article

Eukaryotic genomes, which comprise as many as 3 billion DNA bases, are packaged into a higher-ordered structure called chromatin. Over the last decade, biochemical and genetic analyses have led to an almost revolutionary understanding of chromatin as a fundamental regulator of genome function rather than as a structural scaffold. However, studies that focus on specific genes, proteins, and histone modifications are limited in their ability to describe comprehensively the structure and function of chromatin. Systematic approaches, reviewed here, are beginning to achieve this kind of global perspective.