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Epigenetics

How to lose a tail

Nature volume 456, pages 885–886 (2008)Cite this article

Everyone carries some baggage they would like to lose. For the histone protein H3, that baggage is a chunk of its tail, which when clipped off affects the expression of genes with which the histone is associated.

Chromatin — the complex of DNA and histone proteins — is highly dynamic. The histone constituents of chromatin can be reversibly modified, replaced with related proteins, or cleaved by proteolytic enzymes. Two studies1,2, published in Cell and Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, now show that histone modification by regulated proteolytic cleavage is required during cell differentiation in both mammals and yeast to alter gene expression.

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Figure 1: Cleavage of the H3 amino-terminal tail.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Mary Ann Osley is in the Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, University of New Mexico School of Medicine, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131–0001, USA. mosley@salud.unm.edu,

    Mary Ann Osley

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  1. Mary Ann Osley
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Osley, M. How to lose a tail. Nature 456, 885–886 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/456885a

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