Home > Browse Issues > Vol.36 No.1
An Overview on Structure of Centromeric Nucleosomes
Zhang Tao, Yang Zujun*
School of Life Science and Technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610054, China
Abstract: As an essential element of eukaryotic chromosome， centromere is required for attachment to spindle microtubules and equally segregate the chromatin to two daughter cells during mitosis and meiosis. The fundamental unit of centromere is centromeric nucleosomes， which contains a histone H3 variant called centromere histone 3. In recent years， the structure of centromeric nucleosomes is becoming a hot topic for the cell biology researches. The models of octamers， hexamers， homotypic tetramers and hemisomes for centromeric nucleosome have been proposed recently from different eukaryotic organisms. This review described each centromere nucleosome model and provided potential mechanism based on in vivo and in vitro excrement. The relationship between the structure and function of the centromeric nucleosomes was also discussed.
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