Near-atomistic simulations reveal the molecular principles that control chromatin structure and phase separation.

Near-atomistic simulations with OpenCGChromatin reveal that H4K16 and H3K9 modifications most disrupt chromatin compaction by weakening tail interactions.

• Why it matters: Understanding chromatin organization is vital for decoding genome function, yet many molecular details remain experimentally inaccessible.
• What they did: The authors developed OpenCGChromatin, a high-performance coarse-grained model that simulates chromatin systems tens of kilobases long, predicting structures and stability consistent with experimental data.
• The result: The simulations explain how linker-DNA length influences histone tail accessibility and show that specific acetylation patterns weaken tail interactions, providing insights into chromatin regulation mechanisms.