Histone H3.3 is enriched in covalent modifications associated with active chromatin

Chromatin states can be distinguished by differential covalent modifications of histones or by utilization of histone variants. Chromatin associated with transcriptionally active loci becomes enriched for histones with particular lysine modifications and accumulates the H3.3 histone variant, the substrate for replication-independent nucleosome assembly. However, studies of modifications at particular loci have not distinguished between histone variants, so the relationship among modifications, histone variants, and nucleosome assembly pathways is unclear. To address this uncertainty, we have quantified the relative abundance of H3 and H3.3 and their lysine modifications. Using a Drosophila cell line system in which H3.3 has been shown to specifically package active loci, we found that H3.3 accounts for approximately 25% of total histone 3 in bulk chromatin, enough to package essentially all actively transcribed genes. MS and antibody characterization of separated histone 3 fractions revealed that H3.3 is relatively enriched in modifications associated with transcriptional activity and deficient in dimethyl lysine-9, which is abundant in heterochromatin. To explain enrichment on alternative variants, we propose that histone modifications are tied to the alternative nucleosome assembly pathways that use primarily H3 at replication forks and H3.3 at actively transcribed genes in a replication-independent manner.