We investigate the mechanisms of histone sliding and detachment with a stochastic model that couples thermally induced, passive histone sliding with active motor-driven histone unwrapping. Analysis of a passive loop or twist defect-mediated histone sliding mechanism shows that diffusional sliding is enhanced as larger portions of the DNA is peeled off the histone. The mean times to histone deta...

Histone lysine methylation plays a critical role in epigenetic regulation of eukaryotes. To date, studies have shown that lysine residues of K4, K9, K27, K36 and K79 in histone H3 and K20 in histone H4 can be modified by histone methyltransferases (HMTs). Such histone methylation can specifically activate or repress the transcriptional activity to play a key role in gene expression/regulation a...

Eukaryotes possess a variety of histone-modifying protein complexes. Generally, a histone-modifying protein complex consists of multiple subunits, that is, a catalytic subunit and the associated subunits. In this study, I analyzed 62 and 48 subunits of the histone-modifying protein complexes of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Schizosaccharomyces pombe, respectively. The evolutionary conservation l...

Histone acetyltransferase 1 is the founding member of the histone acetyltransferase superfamily and catalyzes lysine acetylation of newly synthesized histone H4. Here we report a 1.9-Å resolution crystal structure of human histone acetyltransferase 1 in complex with acetyl coenzyme A and histone H4 peptide. The crystal structure reveals that the cofactor and the side chain of lysine 12 of histo...

Mammalian histone gene transcription is increased approximately fivefold during the transition from the G1 phase to the S phase of the cell cycle. In this study, we present a detailed in vivo analysis of the human histone H2b promoter, which establishes that transcriptional regulation of this gene is mediated by a subtype-specific consensus element containing the core octanucleotide ATTTGCAT. O...

The histone fold motif has previously been identified as a structural feature common to all four core histones and is involved in both histone-histone and histone-DNA interactions. Through the use of a novel motif searching method, a group of proteins containing the histone fold motif has been established. The proteins in this group are involved in a wide variety of functions related mostly to ...

Alteration of the acetylation state of histone proteins contributes to transcriptional regulation and epigenetic inheritance. Dysregulation of these processes may lead to human diseases, especially cancer. One of the major chromatin modifications is histone acetylation and this review gives an overview of the role of histone acetyltransferases, their structural aspects, as well as of chemical m...

Histone lysine (K) methylation is a type of epigenetic modification involved in regulation of DNA-based processes, including transcription, replication and repair. It can either activate or repress transcription depending on the histone K residue on which methylation occurs and on chromatin context of additional other modifications. In both animals and plants, methylation on one histone K resid...