Figure 2.

Results of the MD simulations for rNCP, aNCP, and paNCP models for the systems with KCl and MgCl₂ salts (Table 1). (a and b) RDFs of the core-core (a) and external tail-core (b) distributions collected for the converged region of the trajectories (the last 1.6 × 10⁷ MD steps). The inset in b shows the change in the maximum intensity of the external tail-core RDF during the course of the MD simulation run. The numerical value of the RDF corresponds to the concentration of particles relative to the value expected for a uniform distribution. (c and d) Histograms of the averaged values of the maxima of the core-core (c) and external tail-core (d) RDFs under two salt conditions, 4.15 mM MgCl₂ (hatched bars) and 65.4 mM KCl (gray bars). (e) Close-up view of a snapshot of three NCPs in aggregation, with each nucleosome and its core and tails in a different color, demonstrating the participation of tails in intercore interactions.