The HGP project utilized white blood cells from female and sperm cells from male candidates to map the human DNA. Since these cells are differentiated, the ratio of heterochromatin to euchromatin would be different from other kind of cells. I was curious whether the amount of heterochromatin and euchromatin (provided by mapping analysis) significantly differs from one cell type to another (for example a muscle cell vs an epidermal cell) or it is in acceptable range to hold true for all the cell types.
The answer is yes, the amount of heterochromatin varies with cell type and degree of differentiation. A recent paper from ken Zaret's lab really explores this idea in detail by mapping changes in H3K9me3. See, Nicetto et al. , Science 363, p294-297
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