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  • RESEARCH BRIEFINGS

How flowering plants compact their sperm DNA

It has not been clear how sperm DNA is compacted in the pollen of flowering plants. Research has now revealed that sperm chromatin, which is a complex of DNA and proteins, is packaged by a special histone protein that spontaneously aggregates in a phenomenon known as phase separation.

This is a summary of: Buttress, T. et al. Histone H2B.8 compacts flowering plant sperm through chromatin phase separation. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-022-05386-6 (2022).

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-03327-x

‘Expert opinion’ and the figure are published under a CC BY 4.0 licence.

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