Antigenic structure of histone H1(0).

In order to study the antigenic structure of histone H1(0) the purified protein from mouse liver was subjected to different chemical and enzymatic treatments (CNBr, acetic acid, trypsin, chymotrypsin). The resulting peptides were fractionated in SDS-containing or acid-urea polyacrylamide gels, transferred by electroblotting onto nitrocellulose paper and probed with specific rabbit anti-H1(0) antiserum. The C-terminal fragments 99-193 (obtained following acetic acid hydrolysis) and 107-193 (obtained by chymotrypsin digestion) also exhibited strong immunoreactivity. Fragment 1-30 (CNBr cleavage) contained antigenic determinants while the shorter fragments 1-22 and 1-28 (acetic acid hydrolysis) failed to show any detectable reactivity. It was concluded that, in contrast to histone H5 whose reactivity is mainly concentrated to the globular domain of the molecule, the antigenic determinants in histone H1(0) are more or less evenly distributed along the polypeptide chain with the possible exception of the short unstructured N-nose.