Mouse Heterochromatin Adopts Digital Compaction States without Showing Hallmarks of HP1-Driven Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation

Abstract

Mouse cells package heterochromatin into compact foci. Erdel et al. show that these foci lack hallmarks of liquid droplets and rather resemble collapsed polymer globules. Their size, accessibility, and compaction are independent of HP1. They can adopt two distinct folding states that possibly represent the fundamental modes of chromatin compaction.