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Multiple Evolutionary Solutions to Core Histone Gene Regulation
Author(s) -
MarinoRamirez Leonardo,
Jordan I. King,
Landsman David
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.21.6.a1033-a
Subject(s) - biology , histone , histone h1 , genetics , schizosaccharomyces pombe , conserved sequence , histone methylation , histone octamer , promoter , histone code , gene , evolutionary biology , computational biology , saccharomyces cerevisiae , nucleosome , gene expression , peptide sequence , dna methylation
Core histones are one of the most conserved protein families known. The patterns of core histone gene expression are also highly similar among distantly related eukaryotic species. Core histone genes from Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Schizosaccharomyces pombe , as well as the more distantly related Homo sapiens , are subject very specific cell‐cycle regulation that leads to expression peaking in S‐phase. Although a number of core histone cis‐regulatory elements have been identified across model eukaryotic organisms, little is known about the mechanisms underlying the evolution of these cis‐binding sites and how these result in the highly conserved expression phenotype. We explore the evolution of 14 experimentally verified core histone cis‐regulatory elements and compare their evolution to core histone protein sequence evolution among 24 different species. The core histone cis‐elements, on the other hand, show a pattern of lineage‐specific evolution with elements from the same, or similar, species being more closely related to one another than to elements of more distantly related species. We show that a number of these cis‐elements are strongly conserved in terms of both sequence and position along the presumptive promoters. Interestingly, a few cis‐elements show high plasticity at the sequence level. The presence of species‐specific histone regulatory mechanisms is opposite to what is seen at the protein sequence level. Our results indicate that the solution space is larger for cis‐element and promoter evolution compared to the solution space for protein evolution and shed new light on the regulatory mechanisms underlying the evolution of core histone transcriptional networks.