The arrangement of nucleosomes in chromatin plays a role in transcriptional 
regulation by restricting the accessibility of transcription factors and RNA 
polymerase II to cis-acting elements and promoters. For gene activation, the 
chromatin structure is altered to an open configuration. The mechanism for this 
process has been extensively analyzed. However, the mechanism by which 
repressive chromatin is reconstituted to terminate transcription has not been 
fully elucidated. Here, we investigated the mechanisms by which chromatin is 
reconstituted in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombefbp1 gene, which is 
robustly induced upon glucose starvation but tightly repressed under 
glucose-rich conditions. We found that the chromatin structure in the region 
upstream from fbp1 is closed by a two-step process. When cells are returned to 
glucose-rich medium following glucose starvation, changes in the nucleosome 
pattern alter the chromatin configuration at the transcription factor binding 
site to an inaccessible state, after which the nucleosome density upstream from 
fbp1 gradually increases via histone loading. Interestingly, this histone 
loading was observed in the absence of the Tup family corepressors Tup11 and 
Tup12. Analysis of strains carrying either gene disruptions or mutations 
affecting nine fission yeast histone chaperone genes demonstrated that the 
histone chaperone Asf1 induces nucleosome loading during glucose repression. 
These data establish a previously unappreciated chromatin reconstitution 
mechanism in fbp1 repression.