Histone variants in archaea - An undiscovered country

Exchanging core histones in the nucleosome for paralogous variants can have important functional ramifications. Many of these variants, and their physiological roles, have been characterized in exquisite detail in model eukaryotes, including humans. In comparison, our knowledge of histone biology in archaea remains rudimentary. This is true in particular for our knowledge of histone variants. Many archaea encode several histone genes that differ in sequence, but do these paralogs make distinct, adaptive contributions to genome organization and regulation in a manner comparable to eukaryotes? Below, we review what we know about histone variants in archaea at the level of structure, regulation, and evolution. In all areas, our knowledge pales when compared to the wealth of insight that has been gathered for eukaryotes. Recent findings, however, provide tantalizing glimpses into a rich and largely undiscovered country that is at times familiar and eukaryote-like and at times strange and uniquely archaeal. We sketch a preliminary roadmap for further exploration of this country; an undertaking that may ultimately shed light not only on chromatin biology in archaea but also on the origin of histone-based chromatin in eukaryotes.