Letter abstract
Nature Cell Biology 6, 73 - 77 (2003)
Published online: 7 December 2003 | doi:10.1038/ncb1076
There is an Erratum (May 2004) associated with this Letter.
Histone H3 lysine 4 methylation patterns in higher eukaryotic genes
Robert Schneider1,3, Andrew J. Bannister1,3, Fiona A. Myers2, Alan W. Thorne2, Colyn Crane-Robinson2 & Tony Kouzarides1
Lysine residues within histones can be mono-, di - or tri-methylated. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae tri-methylation of Lys 4 of histone H3 (K4/H3) correlates with transcriptional activity, but little is known about this methylation state in higher eukaryotes. Here, we examine the K4/H3 methylation pattern at the promoter and transcribed region of metazoan genes. We analysed chicken genes that are developmentally regulated, constitutively active or inactive. We found that the pattern of K4/H3 methylation shows similarities to S. cerevisiae. Tri-methyl K4/H3 peaks in the 5' transcribed region and active genes can be discriminated by high levels of tri-methyl K4/H3 compared with inactive genes. However, our results also identify clear differences compared to yeast, as significant levels of K4/H3 methylation are present on inactive genes within the 
-globin locus, implicating this modification in maintaining a 'poised' chromatin state. In addition, K4/H3 di-methylation is not genome-wide and di-methylation is not uniformly distributed throughout the transcribed region. These results indicate that in metazoa, di- and tri-methylation of K4/H3 is linked to active transcription and that significant differences exist in the genome-wide methylation pattern as compared with S. cerevisiae.
- Wellcome/CR UK Institute and Department of Pathology, Tennis Court Road, Cambridge, CB2 1QR, UK.
- Biophysics Laboratories, Institute of Biomedical and Biomolecular Sciences, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth PO1 2DT, UK.
- These authors contributed equally to this work.
Correspondence to: Tony Kouzarides1 e-mail: tk106@mole.bio.cam.ac.uk
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