Notice of RetractionDynamic Nucleosome Positioning around Functional Transcription Factor Binding Sites in the Promoters of Inducible NF-kappaB Target Genes

Notice of Retraction

After careful and considered review of the content of this paper by a duly constituted expert committee, this paper has been found to be in violation of IEEE´s Publication Principles.

We hereby retract the content of this paper. Reasonable effort should be made to remove all past references to this paper.

The presenting author of this paper has the option to appeal this decision by contacting TPII@ieee.org.

Transcription is the initial and crucial step of gene expression. It is shaped by the interaction between nucleosomes, transcription factors (TFs) and other proteins and protein complexes. These DNA binding factors compete with one another for binding along the genome and dynamically regulate the transcription level. It has been considered that gene activation is often associated with nucleosome eviction and active regulatory sequences tend to be depleted of nucleosomes. Here we investigate the nucleosome positioning pattern and the NF-κB transcription factor binding sites (TFBSs) in the promoters of inducible NF-κB target genes in the human genome. The results demonstrate that there is high nucleosome occupancy over functional NF-κB binding sites and their surrounding region in resting CD4+T cells and the high nucleosome occupancy reduces significantly after cell activation, which suggests nucleosomes are either removed or shifted to facilitate the binding of NF-κB. Our results are consistent with a recent study about p53. It may suggest that in contrast to yeast, there is generally high nucleosome occupancy which reduces markedly upon cell activation around active regulatory regions in the human genome.