Class I HDACs Share a Common Mechanism of Regulation by Inositol Phosphates

Acetylation of histone H4 on lysine 16 (H4-K16Ac) is a prevalent and reversible posttranslational chromatin modification in eukaryotes. To characterize the structural and functional role of this mark, we used a native chemical ligation strategy to generate histone H4 that was homogeneously acetylated at K16. The incorporation of this modified histone into nucleosomal arrays inhibits the formation of compact 30-nanometer-like fibers and impedes the ability of chromatin to form cross-fiber interactions. H4-K16Ac also inhibits the ability of the adenosine triphosphate-utilizing chromatin assembly and remodeling enzyme ACF to mobilize a mononucleosome, indicating that this single histone modification modulates both higher order chromatin structure and functional interactions between a nonhistone protein and the chromatin fiber.

The objective of any modern data-processing program is to produce from a set of diffraction images a set of indices (hkls) with their associated intensities (and estimates of their uncertainties), together with an accurate estimate of the crystal unit-cell parameters. This procedure should not only be reliable, but should involve an absolute minimum of user intervention. The process can be conveniently divided into three stages. The first (autoindexing) determines the unit-cell parameters and the orientation of the crystal. The unit-cell parameters may indicate the likely Laue group of the crystal. The second step is to refine the initial estimate of the unit-cell parameters and also the crystal mosaicity using a procedure known as post-refinement. The third step is to integrate the images, which consists of predicting the positions of the Bragg reflections on each image and obtaining an estimate of the intensity of each reflection and its uncertainty. This is carried out while simultaneously refining various detector and crystal parameters. Basic features of the algorithms employed for each of these three separate steps are described, principally with reference to the program MOSFLM.