Contributions of histone variants in nucleosome structure and function.

Chromatin compacts genomic DNA in eukaryotes. The primary chromatin unit is the nucleosome core particle, composed of four pairs of the core histones, H2A, H2B, H3, and H4, and 145-147 base pairs of DNA. Since replication, recombination, repair, and transcription take place in chromatin, the structure and dynamics of the nucleosome must be versatile. These nucleosome characteristics underlie the epigenetic regulation of genomic DNA. In higher eukaryotes, many histone variants have been identified as non-allelic isoforms, which confer nucleosome diversity. In this article, we review the manifold types of nucleosomes produced by histone variants, which play important roles in the epigenetic regulation of chromatin.

• Publication year

  2020

• Venue

  Journal of Molecular Biology

• Publication date

  2020-10-13

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1016/j.jmb.2020.10.012PMID 33065110
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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