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ABSTRACT
The centromere is a critical genomic region that enables faithful chromosome segregation during mitosis, and must be distinguishable from other genomic regions to facilitate establishment of the kinetochore. The centromere-specific histone H3-variant CENP-A forms a special nucleosome that functions as a marker for centromere specification. In addition to the CENP-A nucleosomes, there are additional H3 nucleosomes that have been identified in centromeres, both of which are predicted to exhibit specific features. It is likely that the composite organization of CENP-A and H3 nucleosomes contributes to the formation of centromere-specific chromatin, termed ‘centrochromatin’. Recent studies suggest that centrochromatin has specific histone modifications that mediate centromere specification and kinetochore assembly. We use chicken non-repetitive centromeres as a model of centromeric activities to characterize functional features of centrochromatin. This review discusses our recent progress, and that of various other research groups, in elucidating the functional roles of histone modifications in centrochromatin.
Disclosure of potential conflicts of interest
No potential conflicts of interest were disclosed.
Acknowledgments
The author is very grateful to Tetsuya Hori and Wei-Hao Shang, who contribute to analysis of histone modifications in chicken centromeres. The author also thanks other members of the Fukagawa Lab for useful discussion.
Funding
This work in the Fukagawa Lab was supported by MEXT KAKENHI (Grant Numbers 25221106 and 15H05972).