Fig. 1

Var introns show significantly higher chromatin accessibility. a Average genome-wide sequence read coverage around the intron. Both data sets show higher chromatin accessibility around var introns. Coverage is expressed as the fraction of the highest coverage value among all positions within the plot window. The yellow bar represents average intron length. b Boxplot shows FAIRE-Seq signal around introns grouped according to gene annotation (‘**’ represents p-value < 0.01, FDR <0.01 for all comparisons between different gene groups and var genes). c Average genome-wide heterochromatin sequence read coverage around the intron. Both data sets show lower heterochromatin signal around var introns. Coverage is defined as in Fig. 1a