11/25/2025
How do reader proteins interact with chromatin to regulate biological processes?
📢 A new study in Nucleic Acids Research shows how nucleosome context shapes chromatin reader specificity — a key insight for understanding disease mechanisms and therapeutic targeting.
Why it matters:
Reader binding to histone PTMs underlies gene regulation, but most studies rely on histone peptides, which capture only part of the story. Peptides can’t reveal multivalent engagement mechanisms or nucleosome architecture, both essential for accurate reader profiling.
Key takeaways:
🔹 EpiCypher developed Captify™, a platform for rapid, sensitive, and robust screening of chromatin-associated proteins against fully defined peptide and nucleosome substrates.
🔹 Reader domains bind differently on nucleosomes vs. peptides, highlighting a major limitation of peptide-only screens.
🔹 In vitro nucleosome preferences were validated in vivo using reader–CUT&RUN genomic mapping.
EpiCypher’s Captify™ platform and CUTANA™ CUT&RUN were central to dissecting these nucleosome-dependent mechanisms — offering a more complete view of how chromatin readers interpret the histone code.
📄 Read the full paper: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41182902/
