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In biology, histones are highly basic proteins abundant in lysine and arginine residues that are found in eukaryotic cell nuclei and in most Archaeal phyla. They act as spools around which DNA winds to create structural units called nucleosomes .
Histones associate with DNA to form nucleosomes, which themselves bundle to form chromatin fibers, which in turn make up the more familiar chromosome. Histones are globular proteins with a flexible N-terminus (taken to be the tail) that protrudes from the nucleosome. Many of the histone tail modifications correlate very well to chromatin ...
Histones are proteins that package DNA into nucleosomes. [1] Histones are responsible for maintaining the shape and structure of a nucleosome. One chromatin molecule is composed of at least one of each core histones per 100 base pairs of DNA. [2] There are five families of histones known to date; these histones are termed H1/H5, H2A, H2B, H3 ...
Eukaryotic histones were first discovered through experiments in 0.4M NaCl. In these high salt concentrations, the eukaryotic histone protein is eluted from a DNA solution in which single stranded DNA is bound covalently to cellulose. Following elution, the protein readily binds DNA, indicating the protein's high affinity for DNA.
Core histones are four proteins called H2A, H2B, H3 and H4 and they are all found in equal parts in the cell. All four of the core histone amino acid sequences contain between 20 and 24% of lysine and arginine and the size or the protein ranges between 11400 and 15400 daltons, making them relatively small, yet highly positively charged proteins. [6]
Specifically histones H3 and H4 are nearly identical in structure among all eukaryotes, suggesting strict evolutionary conservation of both structure and function. [4] Histones are positively charged molecules as they contain lysine and arginine in larger quantities and DNA is negatively charged. This allows histones to make a strong ionic bond ...
The proteins combined with DNA are histones and protamines; the resulting nucleoproteins are located in chromosomes. Thus, the entire chromosome, i.e. chromatin in eukaryotes consists of such nucleoproteins. [2] [13]
In molecular biology, the linker histone H1 is a protein family forming a critical component of eukaryotic chromatin. H1 histones bind to the linker DNA exiting from the nucleosome core particle, while the core histones ( H2A , H2B , H3 and H4 ) form the octamer core of the nucleosome around which the DNA is wrapped.