Since the discovery several years ago by Weintraub and Groudine (1976) that chromatin containing active chicken globin genes is preferentially digested by DNase I, it has become clear that genes in an active state are contained in domains of chromatin that have a structure and composition that is significantly different from those associated with the bulk of DNA. More recently, several groups have reported that small regions of DNA near active genes, frequently located very near their 5′ ends, are hypersensitive to DNase I and a variety of other nucleases (Kuo et al. 1979; Stradler et al. 1980; Wu 1980; Keene and Elgin 1981; McGhee et al. 1981; Samal et al. 1981; Wu and Gilbert 1981). Elgin (1981) has hypothesized that establishment of this hypersensitive state is an event of cell commitment that is necessary, but perhaps not sufficient, for a gene to be efficiently transcribed by RNA polymerase II....
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Senear et al. (1983) studied this question.