Eaf3 regulates the global pattern of histone acetylation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Saccharomyces cerevisiae has a global pattern of histone acetylation in which histone H3 and H4 acetylation levels are lower at protein-coding sequences than at promoter regions. The loss of Eaf3, a subunit of the NuA4 histone acetylase and Rpd3 histone deacetylase complexes, greatly alters the genomic profile of histone acetylation, with the effects on H4 appearing to be more pronounced than those on H3. Specifically, the loss of Eaf3 causes increases in H3 and H4 acetylation at coding sequences and decreases at promoters, such that histone acetylation levels become evenly distributed across the genome. Eaf3 does not affect the overall level of H4 acetylation, the recruitment of the NuA4 catalytic subunit Esa1 to target promoters, or the level of transcription of the genes analyzed for histone acetylation. Whole-genome transcriptional profiling indicates that Eaf3 plays a positive, but quantitatively modest, role in the transcription of a small subset of genes, whereas it has a negative effect on very few genes. We suggest that Eaf3 regulates the genomic profile of histone H3 and H4 acetylation in a manner that does not involve targeted recruitment and is independent of transcriptional activity.