# Chromatin dynamics of the Klf4 locus in mouse pluripotent cells

## TL;DR

This study examines how chromatin moves in mouse stem cells, finding that transcription does not significantly affect chromatin dynamics at the Klf4 locus.

## Contribution

The study challenges the idea that active transcription strongly influences chromatin dynamics by comparing multiple regions in the Klf4 locus.

## Key findings

- Cis-regulatory elements and non-regulatory regions show similar chromatin motion in transcribing and non-transcribing cells.
- Transcription does not significantly alter the dynamics of the Klf4 locus in mouse embryonic stem cells.
- The ANCHOR3 system enables tracking of multiple genomic regions within a chromatin domain.

## Abstract

Understanding the factors involved in chromatin dynamics is crucial for the study of biochemical processes in which distant genomic regions need to come in close proximity. Previous single locus tracking studies suggest that chromatin dynamics are linked to active transcription, but studies which compare the chromatin dynamics between different locations within a defined chromatin domain are still very limited. Here we used the ANCHOR3 DNA labeling system to track multiple cis-regulatory elements and non-regulatory control regions at different positions in the mouse Klf4 locus. We observe homogeneous chromatin motion of cis-regulatory elements and non-regulatory control regions in Klf4 transcribing mESCs and their non-transcribing EpiLCs daughter cells. These observations challenge the notion that active transcription has a major effect on the locus dynamics of mammalian genes.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1038/s41598-026-45230-9.