Table 1.

Peak nomenclatures and thermal transitions.

Transition	(T °C)*	Assignment	Reference
I (0)	58 (57)	Melting of nuclear matrix, lamins and intermediate filaments	Lepock( 2001) and Balbi(1989)
II (I)	66 (64)	Conformation change of histone complement and denaturation nuclear-RNA associated proteins	Cavazza(1991), Balbi (1989)
III (II)	84 (84)	Melting of nucleosome organized into 10nm filaments
IV (III)	91 (97)	Organization of the nucleosome into higher order structures (~30 nm fibers), unstacking of base pairs in unconstrained DNA, compaction of DNA	Cavazza(1991), Balbi (1989)
V (IV)	103 (107)	Unstacking of bases in topographically constrained DNA, interaction of the core particle with condensed chromatin structures, reorganization of histone(H1) chromatin complex	Almagor and Cole (1989)

Black Roman Numerals refer to the nomenclature adopted in this paper and thermal transition temperatures noted in DSC scans presented in Fig. 1. Number in red parentheses refer to the nomenclature adopted by Vergarini et al. (2004) and thermal transition temperatures noted by Vergarini et al. (2004).