A chromatosome is a result of

histone H1 Histone H1 is one of the five main histone protein families which are components of chromatin in eukaryotic cells. Though highly conserved, it is nevertheless the most variable histone in sequence across species. Structure Metazoan H1 prote ...

binding to a nucleosome, which contains a

histone octamer A histone octamer is the eight-protein complex found at the center of a nucleosome core particle. It consists of two copies of each of the four core histone proteins ( H2A, H2B, H3, and H4). The octamer assembles when a tetramer, containing two ...

and DNA. The chromatosome contains 166 base pairs of DNA. 146 base pairs are from the DNA wrapped around the histone core of the nucleosome. The remaining 20 base pairs are from the DNA of histone H1 binding to the nucleosome.

Histone H1 Histone H1 is one of the five main histone protein families which are components of chromatin in eukaryotic cells. Though highly conserved, it is nevertheless the most variable histone in sequence across species. Structure Metazoan H1 prote ...

, and its other variants, are referred to as linker histones. Protruding from the linker histone are

linker DNA In molecular biology, linker DNA is double-stranded DNA (38-53 base pairs long) in between two nucleosome cores that, in association with histone H1, holds the cores together. Linker DNA is seen as the string in the "beads and string model", w ...

. Chromatosomes are connected to each other when the linker DNA of one chromatosome binds to the linker histone of another chromatosome.{{Cite journal, last=Widom, first=J., date=1998, title=Structure, dynamics, and function of chromatin in vitro, journal=Annual Review of Biophysics and Biomolecular Structure, volume=27, pages=285–327, doi=10.1146/annurev.biophys.27.1.285, issn=1056-8700, pmid=9646870

Picture

https://www.rcsb.org/pdb/explore.do?structureId=4QLC

References

Molecular biology