Question

What would happen if histones were to be mutated and made rich in acidic amino acids such as aspartic acid and glutamic acid in place of basic amino acids such as lysine and arginine?

Answer 1

Acidic amino acids

Glutamic acid and aspartic acid are acidic amino acids. They provide an overall negative charge to thehistone proteins when they replace lysine and arginine.

The consequences of acidic amino acids in histone proteins are as follows:

• Negatively charged histone will repel negatively charged DNA molecules. Thus, DNA will not wrap around these histone proteins and remain unpackaged in the nucleus.
• Histones lose their packaging function.
• The DNA will have many hypersensitive sites, which are accessible to RNA polymerase for transcription. Thus, transcriptional control also is impaired.

Related Questions

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