The Origins of Histones

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The DNA by itself doesn't want to be compacted because it's like charges repel and it's negatively charged. So you can shield that with some positive charges. But in some sense, unless you're a sperm cell, or where you are sort of a dormant state,. You want to survive some harsh conditions. Some archaea might actually be doing just that. They might have histones that coat or wrap most of the DNA. And then actually, if you actually look at how many of those proteins you find in a given archaea cell, that can vary quite a lot. In some archaea, they might be used in a different way to others.

Eukaryotic cells manage to pull off a number of remarkable feats. One is packing quite a long DNA molecule, with potentially billions of base pairs, into a tiny central nucleus. A key role is played by histones, proteins that provide scaffolding for DNA to wrap around. Histones also appear in archaea (one of the other domains of life), but until recently there wasn't evidence for them in bacteria (the final of the three domains). Todays guest, Tobias Warnecke, is an author on a recent paper that claims to provide such evidence. We discuss this new result, as well as background questions of how cells evolved and what their current structure can teach us about their histories.

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Tobias Warnecke received his Ph.D. in biology from the University of Bath. He is currently a Programme Leader and MRC Investigator at the London Institute of Medical Sciences. He is a co-author on A. Hochner et al. (2023), "Histone-Organized Chromatin in Bacteria."

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