A chromosome’s DNA is a single long thread, and like thread, it must be carefully spooled to keep it from becoming a hopeless tangle. In eukaryotes, that job falls to histones, proteins that link together to form barrel-shaped nucleosomes, around which DNA wraps to form the most fundamental level of chromosome structure. But histones are more than just an unvarying genomic scaffold. It is now c...

Non-epithelial intermediate filament (IF) subunit proteins show a high and specific affinity for core histones at physiological ionic strength. When IF proteins are titrated with a mixture of core histones and linker histone H1, in general the latter is totally excluded from complexation and in the adducts formed the moderately-arginine-rich histones H2A and H2B are progressively replaced by th...

“The methods developed for the isolation of histones by E.W. Johns and his colleagues, particularly D.M.P. Phillips, have provided the major impetus to most of the chemical and physico-chemical studies on histones. The reason for this success lay in the development of simple clean methods for the isolat ion and purif ication of large quantit ies of the individual histones. In this paper two met...

Rat liver chromatin has been fractionated into two fractions on the basis of precipitability in standard saline after mild treatment with DNase II. The major portion of liver chromatin contains little nonhistone protein and is enriched in histones, while a minor portion of such chromatin, with which RNA polymerase is associated, is highly enriched in proteins other than histone and impoverished...

Holocarboxylase synthetase catalyzes the covalent binding of biotin to histones in humans and other eukaryotes. Eleven biotinylation sites have been identified in histones H2A, H3, and H4. K12-biotinylated histone H4 is enriched in heterochromatin, repeat regions, and plays a role in gene repression. About 30% of the histone H4 molecules are biotinylated at K12 in histone H4 in human fibroblast...

Calf thymus histories comprising two fractions, one rich in lysine, the other having roughly equal amounts of lysine and arginine, Loligo testes histones rich in arginine, and salmine, are compared with respect to their amino acid compositions, and their staining properties when the proteins are fixed on filter paper. The three types of basic proteins; somatic, arginine-rich spermatid histones,...

Post-translational modification of histones and other chromosomal proteins regulates chromatin conformation and gene activity. Methylation and acetylation of lysyl residues are among the most frequently described modifications in these proteins. Whereas these modifications have been studied in detail, very little is known about a recently discovered chemical modification, the N(epsilon)-lysine ...

Neutrophils are able to neutralize pathogens by phagocytosis, by the release of antimicrobial components, as well as by the formation of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs). The latter possibility is a DNA-meshwork mainly consisting of highly concentrated extracellular histones, which are not only toxic for pathogens, but also for endogenous cells triggering several diseases. To reduce the ne...

Histones are DNA-binding proteins found in the chromatin of all eukaryotic cells. They are highly conserved and can be grouped into five major classes: H1/H5, H2A, H2B, H3, and H4. Two copies of H2A, H2B, H3, and H4 bind to about 160 base pairs of DNA forming the core of the nucleosome (the repeating structure of chromatin) and H1/H5 bind to its DNA linker sequence. Overall, histones have a hig...