Surprisingly, inhibition of histone deacetylation at the hTERT promoter did not prevent hTERT repression or nucleosomal deposition, indicating that nucleosomal deposition at the core promoter, but not histone deacetylation, was the cause of transcriptional repression. Our data also suggested that succeeding nucleosomal remodeling and histone deacetylation worked in parallel to establish the stable repressive status of hTERT gene in human somatic cells.