Schematic Presentation of Reconstitution Results

The three-dimensional organization of chromatin fibers at low ionic strength requires the linker histones or the N-terminus of core histone H3.  If the tails of both histones are missing, fibers exhibit flat, beads-on-a-string morphologies.

The structural redundancy of the tails of the linker histones and core histone H3 may be necessary to keep the fiber properly three-dimensionally organized even on stretches of chromatin in which the tail of either the linker histones or of H3 are prevented from interacting with DNA via modifications (e.g. phosphorylation or acetylation).