Does the nuclesome relax the DNA 0.8 of a turn around the nuclesome, and by that you can say that the nucleosome absorbs the supercoil?
The basic point is that roughly one of the two superhelical turns that one would predict to be generated by winding the DNA roughly twice around the nucleosome is absorbed on the nucleosome itself by partially unwinding the DNA. In the absense of a nucleosome, the DNA would prefer to be tightly wound (10.5 bp/ helical turn) and superhelical turns appear as kinking of the DNA and a plasmid winds up like a rubber band. On the nucleosome, though, the DNA is stable in a partially unwound state (10 bp/ helical turn) and as such, one of the two superhelical turns is not free to lead to kinking / rubber-banding the DNA.
