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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2010 Feb 1.
Published in final edited form as: Biol Psychiatry. 2008 Sep 24;65(3):198–203. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2008.08.015

Table 1. Overview of histone lysine forms, including association with transcription.

Information on preferred localization is based on genome-wide studies, see ref. (18, 20, 22, 23, 25, 69, 70) for additional details. The role of H3-lysine 79 methylation is not yet completely understood.

Histone Residue Transcription
H3-lysine 4 (di- and tri-methyl) Activation (Peak levels around transcription start sites)
H3-lysine 4 (mono-methyl) Activation (Peak levels mostly at enhancer sequences)
H3-lysine 9 (di- and tri-methyl) Repression (Peak levels in heterochromatin, DNA repeats, but also found at promoters and other sequences)
H3-lysine 9 (mono-methyl) Activation
H3-lysine 27 (di- and tri-methyl) Repression (Peak levels around transcription start sites)
H3-lysine 27 (mono-methyl) Activation
H3-lysine 36 (tri-methyl) Activation (Peak levels within gene coding and non-coding sequences)
H3-lysine 79 (tri-methyl) Repression (?)
H4-lysine 20 (di- and tri-methyl) Repression (Peak levels in heterochromatin, DNA repeats, but also found at promoters and other sequences)
H4-lysine 20 (mono-methyl) Activation