Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 1991 Aug 1;88(15):6829-33.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.88.15.6829.

Histone contributions to the structure of DNA in the nucleosome

Affiliations

Histone contributions to the structure of DNA in the nucleosome

J J Hayes et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

We describe the application of the hydroxyl radical footprinting technique to examine the contribution of the core histone tails and of histones H3 and H4 to the structure of DNA in the nucleosome. We first establish that, as was previously determined for a nucleosome containing a unique sequence of DNA, mixed-sequence nucleosomes contain two distinct regions of DNA structure. The central three turns of DNA in the nucleosome have a helical periodicity of approximately 10.7 base pairs per turn, while flanking regions have a periodicity of approximately 10.0 base pairs per turn. Removal of the histone tails does not change the hydroxyl radical cleavage pattern in either mixed- or unique-sequence nucleosome samples. A tetramer of histones H3 and H4, (H3/H4)2, organizes the central 120 base pairs of DNA identically to that found in the nucleosome. Moreover, "tailless" octamers and the (H3/H4)2 tetramer recognize the same nucleosome positioning signals as the intact octamer.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. J Biol Chem. 1990 Nov 15;265(32):19839-47 - PubMed
    1. J Biol Chem. 1977 Sep 25;252(18):6516-20 - PubMed
    1. J Mol Biol. 1990 Nov 5;216(1):69-84 - PubMed
    1. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1990 Oct;87(19):7405-9 - PubMed
    1. Nucleic Acids Res. 1990 Oct 11;18(19):5767-74 - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources