In this first issue of Frontiers in Life Science, we publish two papers which look at the problem of nucleosome positioning from different angles. Andrew Flaus discusses its underlying molecular, biochemical principles, while Chevereau et al. investigate the question on the genomic scale, on the basis of physics-derived models.
Understanding nucleosome positioning is one of the current great challenges in regulation biology. Initiated by Roger Kornberg at the end of the 1980s, the problem is currently attacked by a dedicated group of researchers working from different backgrounds on this problem. Structural biologists, molecular biologists, biochemists, physicists – experimentalists and theorists bring in their expertise in order to understand the rôthe positions of the nucleosomes play in gene regulation.
This kind of interdisciplinarity, in which different approaches and tools contribute to the solution of a significant problem, is what we are looking for in the contributions to our Journal. We hope that our readers will profit from having complementary views next to each other in one Journal, in this case for a single important issue in chromatin biology and physics.
The topic of nucleosome positioning cannot be touched upon without remembering Jon Widom whose contributions have been so crucial for this question. Jon died from a heart attack in July 2011 at the age of 55. He is deeply missed by all researchers in the field of chromatin, because he was a great person, a brilliant scientist and, among many other things, he personified a scientific approach which looks beyond disciplinary borders.