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Comment
. 2013 Dec 10;110(50):19974-5.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1319945110. Epub 2013 Nov 26.

Nucleosomes and centromeric DNA packaging

J S Pat Heslop-Harrison  1 , Trude Schwarzacher
Affiliations
Comment

Nucleosomes and centromeric DNA packaging

J S Pat Heslop-Harrison et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .
No abstract available

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Features of centromeric DNA from different viewpoints. (A) An electron micrograph of a section of a metaphase chromosome of a wild wheat species, showing two arms with the centromere at the bend. (B) Metaphase chromosomes of triticale fluorescing blue in the light microscope. Constrictions at the centromeres are visible on each chromosome, with the two chromatids that will separate as the cell divides. (C) Chromosomes from a cell culture line of the model species Arabidopsis thaliana, labeled with a centromeric histone antibody. (D) A diagram of a metaphase chromosome showing the two arms each of two chromatids, separated at the centromere (E) and dividing into chromatids which segregate and are pulled by spindle microtubules (red) attached via the kinetochore at the centromere. (F) DNA motifs found in many centromeres, with blocks of tandemly repeated satellite DNA monomers interspersed with single copy DNA and transposable elements. (G) A diagram of the packaging of double stranded DNA (blue) into nucleosomes, with 147 bp of DNA wrapping 1.67 times around each octamer of the canonical histone proteins (olive) and fixed phase of the nucleosome within the repeat monomer. (H) The unique packaging reported by Zhang et al. (1) with ∼100 bp of the rice CentO tandem repeat sequence (red) folding once around the nucleosome core that includes CenH3 (yellow). (I) A key method for nucleosome analysis involving micrococcal nuclease digestion of chromatin and size separation of the resultant DNA fragments; the enzyme cuts DNA in the linker regions and, over the time course shown, isolates more mononucleosomes, and trims overhanging DNA not protected from digestion by the histone proteins (12). (Scale bars for A–C, 2 µm.)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

References

    1. Zhang T, et al. The CentO satellite confers translational and rotational phasing on cenH3 nucleosomes in rice centromeres. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 110:E4875–E4883. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Talbert PB, et al. 2012. A unified phylogeny-based nomenclature for histone variants. Epigenet Chromatin 5:7.
    1. Westermann S, Schleiffer A. Family matters: Structural and functional conservation of centromere-associated proteins from yeast to humans. Trends Cell Biol. 2013;23(6):260–269. - PubMed
    1. Henikoff S, Dalal Y. Centromeric chromatin: What makes it unique? Curr Opin Genet Dev. 2005;15(2):177–184. - PubMed
    1. Heslop-Harrison JS, Schwarzacher T. Organisation of the plant genome in chromosomes. Plant J. 2011;66(1):18–33. - PubMed

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