Question

What role does a nucleosome play in DNA structure? Why is there a major and a minor groove in DNA? Describe, in simple terms, the hallmarks of DNA structure.

Answer 1

Ans.1). Nucleosomes composed of DNA that wraps around octamer (8) of histone proteins. They reduce the length of a chromatin fiber thus the long DNA is modified in such a way to accomidate in the nucleus. Apart from their function of safely packaging DNA, nucleosomes also modify the activity of the genes that they store.

Ans.2). There are two types of grooves in the DNA, major groove that occurs where the backbones are far apart and minor groove is closer to the backbone. Certain types of proteins bind to alter DNA structure or tp regu;ate transcription or replication. Because of the two grooves, DNA binding proteins easily interact with the bases on the major groove side due to the backbone are not in the way.