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. 2017 May 25;8(5):e2812. doi: 10.1038/cddis.2017.52

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Copyright © 2017 The Author(s)

Cell Death and Disease is an open-access journal published by Nature Publishing Group. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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Intracellular structure and function of histone. Histones are intra-nuclear alkaline proteins that contribute to the structural organisation and stability of chromatin. Individual core histone monomers (H2A, H2B, H3 and H4) combine to form octameric structures. Each octamer is made up of two H3-H4 and two H2A-H2B dimers. DNA strands (146 base pairs) wind around the octamers to form nucleosomes and are held together with linker histones (H1 and H5), forming chromatin. Chromatin coils and condenses to form chromosomes. This enables vast amounts of DNA to be compacted tightly within the nucleus of the cell