Figure 2: Interrelationship between chromatin structure, chromatin accessibility, gene expression and phenotype.

In this cartoon, chromatin structure, chromatin accessibility, gene expression and phenotype are blades of a windmill, representing inter-related components that influence each other and that themselves are directly acted upon by cellular stress (represented here as the wind). These cellular stresses (e.g. extracellular environment, physical forces, intercellular signaling) act through the features labeled along the blades’ trajectory (the act of transcription itself, transcription factors, chromatin binding proteins, histones, histone modifications, DNA modifications, metabolism and lncRNAs) to influence chromatin structure, chromatin accessibility, gene expression and phenotype, and vice versa.