As the fundamental repeating units in eukaryotic chromatin, nucleosomes play an important role in many biological processes. For this reason, the study of the structure of nucleosomes may help to reveal some of the crucial principals of these processes. In our research, we have used alpha shapes to model nucleosome structure and discovered that the periodic DNA dinucleotides AA, TT and GC occupy special positions in nucleosome structure with one nucleotide inside and the other outside the nucleosome surface. This structural feature and other dinucleotide characteristics can provide useful information for the study of nucleosome positioning. (C) 2010 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.