Evidence for an early prokaryotic origin of histones H2A and H4 prior to the emergence of eukaryotes

• Published in: Nucleic acids research Vol. 26; no. 2; pp. 427 - 430
• Main Authors: Slesarev, Alexei I., Belova, Galina I., Kozyavkin, Sergei A., Lake, James A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Oxford University Press 15.01.1998
• Subjects: Amino Acid Sequence; DNA, Archaeal - chemistry; DNA, Archaeal - isolation & purification; Eukaryotic Cells; Euryarchaeota - chemistry; Evolution, Molecular; Histones - chemistry; Histones - genetics; Molecular Sequence Data; Phylogeny; Repetitive Sequences, Nucleic Acid; Sequence Alignment; Space life sciences

Histones have been identified recently in many prokaryotes. These histones, unlike their eukaryotic homologs, are of a single uniform type that is thought to resemble the archetypal ancestor of the eukaryotic histone family. In this paper we report the finding, the cloning and the phylogenetic analy...