The role of Nucleoplasmin (NP) as a H2A-H2B histone chaperone has been extensively characterized. To understand its putative interaction with other histone ligands, we have characterized its ability to bind H3-H4 and histone octamers. We find that the chaperone forms distinct complexes with histones, which differ in the number of molecules that build the assembly and in their spatial distributi...

Eukaryotic gene expression involves tight coordination between transcription and pre-mRNA splicing; however, factors responsible for this coordination remain incompletely defined. Here, we explored the genetic, functional, and biochemical interactions of a likely coordinator, Npl3, an SR-like protein in Saccharomyces cerevisiae that we recently showed is required for efficient co-transcriptiona...

Recently, we have demonstrated a predominant association of Rad26p with the coding sequences but not promoters of several GAL genes following transcriptional induction. Here, we show that the occupancy of histone H2A-H2B dimer at the coding sequences of these genes is not altered following transcriptional induction in the absence of Rad26p. A histone H2A-H2B dimer-enriched chromatin in Δrad26 i...

ARID1A is one of the important cancer-related genes and regulates transcription of certain genes by altering chromatin structure. Inactivated mutations and decreased expression of ARID1A gene have been reported in several kinds of cancer. Histone H2B is a major component of chromatin and encoded by HIST1H2BE. The goal of the study is to evaluate expressing status of ARID1A and H2B as well as th...

The interaction of Cu(2+) and Ni(2+) with the N-terminal tail of histone H2B, the 31 amino acid peptide H2B(1-31) (Ac-PEPAKSAPAPKKG(13)SKKAVTKAQKKD(25)GKKRKR-NH(2)), studied by various spectroscopic techniques (UV/Vis, CD, EPR and NMR) are described. The results showed the formation of Cu(2+)-H2B(1-31) complexes above pH 7.3 most probably through the beta-carboxylate group of D25. With the incr...

Chromatin is a major nuclear component, and it is an active matter of debate to understand its different levels of spatial organization, as well as its implication in gene regulation. Measurements of nuclear chromatin compaction were recently used to understand how DNA is folded inside the nucleus and to detect cellular dysfunctions such as cancer. Super-resolution imaging opens new possibiliti...

Histone tails are highly flexible N- or C-terminal protrusions of histone proteins which facilitate the compaction of DNA into dense superstructures known as chromatin. On a molecular scale histone tails are polyelectrolytes with high degree of conformational disorder which allows them to function as biomolecular "switches", regulating various genetic processes. Unfortunately, their intrinsical...

The role of each histone tail in regulating chromatin structure is elucidated by using a coarse-grained model of an oligonucleosome incorporating flexible histone tails that reproduces the conformational and dynamical properties of chromatin. Specifically, a tailored configurational-bias Monte Carlo method that efficiently samples the possible conformational states of oligonucleosomes yields po...

The involvement of chromatin remodelling in dormancy cycling in the soil seed bank (SSB) is poorly understood. Natural variation between the winter and summer annual Arabidopsis ecotypes Cvi and Bur was exploited to investigate the expression of genes involved in chromatin remodelling via histone 2B (H2B) ubiquitination/de-ubiquitination and histone acetylation/deacetylation, the repressive his...

Glucocorticoids stimulate apoptosis in rat thymocytes that is characterized by internucleosomal DNA degradation. We have previously identified an 18-kDa calcium-dependent nuclease whose activity is associated with this DNA degradation. The existence of this nuclease has been challenged by Alnemri and Litwack (1989) J. Biol. Chem. 264, 4104-4111, who suggest that the nuclease we observed was his...