Final answer:
Nonspecific nuclease treatment of chromatin cuts DNA at random sites, dissociating DNA from histone and other chromatin proteins, ultimately disrupting both nucleosome spacing and higher order structures like the 30 nm fiber, affecting chromatin's role in gene expression and cell division.
Step-by-step explanation:
When chromatin is treated with nonspecific nucleases, the enzymes cut the DNA at random sites. Since chromatin is a complex of DNA and proteins, including histones, this treatment begins to break down the higher order structures of chromatin, resulting in the freeing of DNA fragments from the associated histone proteins.
Nucleases can lead to the degradation of the 'beads-on-a-string' structure of chromatin, where the 'beads' are the nucleosomes comprised of histones and DNA. Continued nuclease treatment would then generate smaller DNA fragments and disassociate histones and other chromatin-associated proteins, ultimately disrupting the regular spacing of nucleosomes and so the 30 nm solenoid fiber structure as well. The acid extraction of histones mentioned indicates that histones are the basic structural units responsible for organizing DNA into nucleosomes within chromatin, and their removal starts to unfold its condensed structure.
Further extraction methods targeting non-histone proteins would lead to the loss of more complex levels of organizational folding, significantly affecting the functions of chromatin, such as gene transcription regulation, which can impact cell cycling and replication, crucial processes in both non-dividing and dividing cells.