Structural plasticity of histones H3-H4 facilitates their allosteric exchange between RbAp48 and ASF1

The mechanisms by which histones are disassembled and reassembled into nucleosomes and chromatin structure during DNA replication, repair and transcription are poorly understood. A better understanding of the processes involved is, however, crucial if we are to understand whether and how histone variants and post-translationally modified histones are inherited in an epigenetic manner. To this end we have studied the interaction of histones H3–H4 with the human retinoblastoma-associated protein RbAp48 and their exchange with a second histone chaperone, anti-silencing function protein 1 (ASF1). Exchange of histones H3–H4 between these two histone chaperones plays a central role in the assembly of new nucleosomes and we show here that the H3–H4 complex has a surprising structural plasticity, which is important for this exchange.