Figure 1.

The two different types of histone depletion. (a) Linker histone depletion gives the fiber more flexibility locally. Normally the linker histone fixes the in- and outgoing DNA strand. If the histone is gone, the DNA arms can move freely with respect to excluded volume potentials. (b) In this case, not only the linker histone but also the whole nucleosome core particle is missing, and hence a long, blank stretch of naked DNA remains.