%0 Journal Article
%T A unified phylogeny-based nomenclature for histone variants
%A Paul B Talbert
%A Kami Ahmad
%A Genevi¨¨ve Almouzni
%A Juan Ausi¨®
%A Frederic Berger
%A Prem L Bhalla
%A William M Bonner
%A W Cande
%A Brian P Chadwick
%A Simon W L Chan
%A George A M Cross
%A Liwang Cui
%A Stefan I Dimitrov
%A Detlef Doenecke
%A Jos¨¦ M Eirin-L¨®pez
%A Martin A Gorovsky
%A Sandra B Hake
%A Barbara A Hamkalo
%A Sarah Holec
%A Steven E Jacobsen
%A Kinga Kamieniarz
%A Saadi Khochbin
%A Andreas G Ladurner
%A David Landsman
%A John A Latham
%A Benjamin Loppin
%A Harmit S Malik
%A William F Marzluff
%A John R Pehrson
%A Jan Postberg
%J Epigenetics & Chromatin
%D 2012
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1756-8935-5-7
%X Histones, the basic proteins that wrap DNA into nucleosomes in eukaryotes, are commonly encoded by multigene families. Histones fall into five protein families, the core histones H2A, H2B, H3 and H4, and the linker histone family H1. A nucleosome core particle is made by assembling two proteins from each of the core histone families together with DNA. Linker DNA between core particles may be bound by a member of the H1 family. The individual paralogous (non-allelic) genes of a histone family may encode identical proteins, or they may encode related but distinct protein isoforms, commonly referred to as ¡°histone variants¡±. Though histone variants have been known almost from the beginning of histone research, we are still discovering the diversity of their roles and functions. Histone variants play critical roles in such diverse processes as transcription, chromosome segregation, DNA repair and recombination, chromatin remodeling, ADP-ribosylation, germline-specific DNA packaging and activation, and even extra-nuclear acrosomal function. Some variants of H2A and H3 have well-studied, specialized functions. Variants of H1 and H2B are common, but much less is known of their functional specialization. H4 variants are few.The diversity of core histones has led to confusion in naming since their discovery. The current names - H2A, H2B, H3 and H4 - for the ¡®canonical¡¯ histones were agreed upon at the Ciba Foundation Symposium in 1975 to simplify and standardize competing names for these proteins based on different methods of extraction [1]. At that time, the first core histone variants of H2A, H2B and H3 had already been described from Drosophila[2], from the sea urchin Parechinus angulosus[3] and from calf thymus [4,5], respectively. Since then, the numerous variants that have been described from these four basic protein families have been named in a variety of styles, using various combinations of numbers, letters and punctuation. The lack of systematized names can lead t
%U http://www.epigeneticsandchromatin.com/content/5/1/7