Figure 1.

Proximal nucleosomal occupancy, chromatin regulation, and the noise-plasticity coupling. We divided the dataset (n = 2045) in ten equally sized bins of increasing proximal nucleosome occupancy. In each bin, we computed the median chromatin regulation effect (CRE). We plotted the difference in plasticity (A, blue curve) or noise (B, red curve) of genes above/below this median and contrasted the observed values with those expected randomly (permutation test in each bin to depict significance, shown as the mean –gray curve– and mean plus two standard deviations –dashed gray curves– obtained with 10000 randomizations). Plasticity is always enhanced by strong chromatin regulation; however, regulation enhances noise only in promoters with high proximal nucleosome occupancy and TATA box (shaded area in A,B). An identical analysis is shown in (C) and (D), but excluding genes with TATA-containing promoters. High occupancy does not lead to increased plasticity/noise in this case (shaded area in C,D).