Open Access

Dataset for the manuscript <Heterochromatin organization and liquid-liquid phase separation: it is not about “if” but about “when”>

Description

Heterochromatin is a membraneless compartment within the cell nucleus. In recent years, a controversy arose on whether heterochromatin organization is driven by liquid-liquid phase separation or not. While many heterochromatin proteins were shown to undergo liquid-liquid phase separation in vitro, other studies reported that this does not happen in cells. Here, we tested the ability of heterochromatin proteins to generate heterochromatin barrier compartments in cells. We found that, while several proteins (H1.0, H1.4, HP1alpha, HP1beta, Mbd1, Mbd2 and MeCP2) form barrier compartments in mouse and/or human cells, this does not happen in all compartments in the same cell. The ability to form compartments is dependent on the ability of the proteins to accumulate in heterochromatin and the competition between heterochromatin compartments to generate barriers. The barrier compartments showed higher enrichment of the protein and bigger size than the non-barrier compartments in the same cell. In this dataset, all images, including half-heterochromatin FRAP (MOCHA-FRAP), confocal images used for Pearson correlation coefficient calculations, and High-Throughput microscopy data are included, together with the code for FIJI and Matlab that was follow in their analysis and the regions of interest and the raw intensity values obtained for each analysis.