The structure of a virus-encoded nucleosome.
Marco Igor Valencia-SánchezStephen Abini-AgbomsonMiao WangRachel LeeNikita VasilyevJenny ZhangPablo De IoannesBernard La ScolaPaul B TalbertSteven HenikoffEvgeny NudlerAlbert J ErivesKarim-Jean ArmachePublished in: Nature structural & molecular biology (2021)
Certain large DNA viruses, including those in the Marseilleviridae family, encode histones. Here we show that fused histone pairs Hβ-Hα and Hδ-Hγ from Marseillevirus are structurally analogous to the eukaryotic histone pairs H2B-H2A and H4-H3. These viral histones form 'forced' heterodimers, and a heterotetramer of four such heterodimers assembles DNA to form structures virtually identical to canonical eukaryotic nucleosomes.