RESEARCH ARTICLE Structure of the chromatin remodelling enzyme Chd1 bound to a ubiquitinylated nucleosome Ramasubramanian Sundaramoorthy1, Amanda L Hughes1, Hassane El-Mkami2, David G Norman3, Helder Ferreira4, Tom Owen-Hughes1* 1Centre for Gene Regulation and Expression, School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Dundee, United Kingdom; 2School of Physics and Astronomy, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, United Kingdom; 3Nucleic Acids Structure Research Group, University of Dundee, Dundee, United Kingdom; 4School of Biology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, United Kingdom Abstract ATP-dependent chromatin remodelling proteins represent a diverse family of proteins that share ATPase domains that are adapted to regulate protein–DNA interactions. Here, we present structures of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae Chd1 protein engaged with nucleosomes in the presence of the transition state mimic ADP-beryllium fluoride. The path of DNA strands through the ATPase domains indicates the presence of contacts conserved with single strand translocases and additional contacts with both strands that are unique to Snf2 related proteins. The structure provides connectivity between rearrangement of ATPase lobes to a closed, nucleotide bound state and the sensing of linker DNA. Two turns of linker DNA are prised off the surface of the histone octamer as a result of Chd1 binding, and both the histone H3 tail and ubiquitin conjugated to lysine 120 are re-orientated towards the unravelled DNA. This indicates how changes to nucleosome structure can alter the way in which histone epitopes are presented. DOI: https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.35720.001 *For correspondence:
[email protected] Introduction Competing interests: The The extended family of ATPases related to the yeast Snf2 protein acts to alter DNA-protein interac- authors declare that no tions (Flaus et al., 2006; Narlikar et al., 2013).