Four papers released online today detail some of the work from David Allis's group and others that's detailed in our recent article on chromatin remodeling. In two Nature papers released today, Allis, a Rockefeller chromatin researcher, along with postdocs Joanna Wysocka and Tomek Swigut and a team led by structural biologist Dinshaw Patel, from Memorial Sloan Kettering, report on BPTF, the largest subunit of the nucleosome remodeling factor (NURF). It contains a so-called PHD finger which they've now shown preferentially binds histone 3 trimethylated at lysine 4. They found the protein in pull-down assays and it appears to maintain activity at developmentally critical HOX genes.
This work is notable for adding support to the controversial histone code hypothesis. The structural work reveals an alpha helix between the PHD finger and a bromodomain. Bromodomain motifs are well known to recognize acetylated lysines, so that unstructured alpha helix might be acting as ...
