Histone molar ratios among different electrophoretic forms of mono- and dinucleosomes

The relative molar ratios of each of the histone classes and protein A24 have been determined in nuclei, chromatin, and different electrophoretic forms of mono- and dinucleosomes of cultured mouse cells. For this purpose, [3H]lysine- and [14C]arginine-labeled cells were used for sample preparations, and stoichiometries were estimated from protein radioactivity profiles and known amino acid compositions following sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS)-gel electrophoresis. The results demonstrate that upper limits of one and two histone H1 molecules exist per mono- and dinucleosome, respectively. However, isolated nuclei contain less than one copy of histone H1 per nucleosome. In addition, among the chromatin subfractions studied, histones H3, H2B, and H4 are essentially equimolar, while histone H2A is less than equimolar by 19 +/- 9%. This latter finding offers direct support to the proposal of Goldknopf (Goldknopf, I. L., French, M. F., Musso, R., and Busch, H. (1977) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 74, 5492-5495) that protein A24 replaces histone H2A in the octamer protein core of the nucleosome, since about 10% of the total histone H2A of cultured mouse cells is in the form of protein A24 and is present in nucleosomes. From the results of the present study, it is concluded that electrophoretic fractionation of mono- and dinucleosomes is not due to variable molar ratios or amounts of the four smaller histone classes, but depends on part on DNA length, the number of associated histone H1 molecules, and non-histone chromosomal proteins.