Pehrson J R, Fuji R N
University of Pennsylvania, Department of Animal Biology, School of Veterinary Medicine, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6048, USA.
Nucleic Acids Res. 1998 Jun 15;26(12):2837-42. doi: 10.1093/nar/26.12.2837.
Histone macroH2A is an unusual core histone that contains a large non-histone region, and a region that resembles a full length H2A. We examined theconservation of this novel structural arrangement by cloning chicken macroH2A cDNAs and comparing them to their rat counterparts. The amino acid sequences of the two known macroH2A subtypes are >95% identical between these species despite evolutionary separation of approximately 300 million years. The H2A region of macroH2A is completely conserved, and thus is even more conserved than conventional H2A in these species. The origin of the non-histone domain was examined by comparing its sequence to proteins found in bacteria and RNA viruses. These comparisons indicate that this domain is derived from a gene that originated prior to the appearance of eukaryotes, and suggest that the non-histone region has retained the basic function of its ancestral gene.
组蛋白巨H2A是一种不同寻常的核心组蛋白,它包含一个大的非组蛋白区域和一个类似于全长H2A的区域。我们通过克隆鸡巨H2A cDNA并将其与大鼠的对应物进行比较,研究了这种新型结构排列的保守性。尽管这两个物种在大约3亿年前就发生了进化分离,但两种已知巨H2A亚型的氨基酸序列在这些物种之间的同一性仍>95%。巨H2A的H2A区域是完全保守的,因此在这些物种中甚至比传统H2A更保守。通过将非组蛋白结构域的序列与细菌和RNA病毒中的蛋白质进行比较,研究了其起源。这些比较表明,该结构域源自一个在真核生物出现之前就起源的基因,并表明非组蛋白区域保留了其祖先基因的基本功能。