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. 2020 Dec 10;48(6):2753–2767. doi: 10.1042/BST20200572

Figure 1. Structures of the nucleosome and histones.

Figure 1.

(A) Top: a structure of the nucleosome (cartoon, PDB ID: 1KX5) with H3 (blue), H4 (green), H2A (yellow), H2B (red) and DNA (grey). Bottom: schematic of a chromatosome with one linker histone H1 (pink) binding to both DNA-ends that emerges from the nucleosome core, facilitating formation of higher-order chromatin structures. (B) Cartoon representation of the structures of core histones and linker histone H1 (PDB ID 1KX5 and 6N89). Individual histone polypeptides are shown in the same colors as in (A)). Top panel show single polypeptide chains of the histone proteins, middle panel show the H3–H4 and H2A–H2B heterodimers as found in the nucleosome and the bottom panel show the H3–H4 and H2A–H2B tetramers as found in the nucleosome. (C) Domain organization of canonical human core histones H3, H4, H2A, H2B and linker histone H1. Sequences of the N-terminal tails and secondary structures of the histone-fold domains are shown.