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
. 1990 Mar;9(3):805-13.
doi: 10.1002/j.1460-2075.1990.tb08177.x.

Phosphorylation at clustered -Ser-Pro-X-Lys/Arg- motifs in sperm-specific histones H1 and H2B

C S Hill  1 , L C Packman, J O Thomas
Affiliations

Phosphorylation at clustered -Ser-Pro-X-Lys/Arg- motifs in sperm-specific histones H1 and H2B

C S Hill et al. EMBO J. 1990 Mar.

Abstract

Sea urchin sperm-specific histones H1 and H2B have distinctive N-terminal, and in the case of H1 also C-terminal, domains containing repeats of a basic motif (-Ser-Pro-Lys/Arg-Lys/Arg- or a closely related sequence). The histones in spermatids (the precursors of sperm) are phosphorylated, and the unphosphorylated histones of mature sperm are rephosphorylated upon fertilization. These changes correlate with finely tuned changes in chromatin packing in the nucleus, and the domains responsible are evidently the N-terminal domains. We show that in spermatids there are six tandemly repeated phosphorylation sites in the N-terminal domain of H1 (a typical cAMP dependent protein kinase site is not phosphorylated) and that H2B is phosphorylated in the N-terminal domain at two or three sites in the case of H2B1 and four sites in H2B2. The consensus sequence for phosphorylation is -Ser-Pro-X-Lys/Arg-, where X is Thr, Gln, Lys or Arg. There is an additional phosphorylated site in the C-terminal domain of H1 but most (or possibly all) copies of the consensus motif, which are here dispersed, are not phosphorylated. The negative charge introduced upon phosphorylation would be expected to weaken or abolish electrostatic interaction with DNA of this motif, which also occurs, and is phosphorylated, in somatic H1s.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Biochemistry. 1978 May 16;17(10):1884-90 - PubMed
    1. Nature. 1981 Aug 6;292(5823):558-60 - PubMed
    1. Biochim Biophys Acta. 1978 Sep 26;536(1):289-97 - PubMed
    1. J Biol Chem. 1982 Jun 10;257(11):6056-63 - PubMed
    1. J Cell Biol. 1983 Apr;96(4):1120-31 - PubMed

Publication types