Abstract
We investigated the evolutionary history of the divergent vertebrate linker histones H10, H5, and HIM. We observed that the sequence of the central conserved domain of these vertebrate proteins shares characteristic features with histone H1 proteins of plants and invertebrate animals which otherwise never appear in any vertebrate histone H1 protein. A quantitative analysis of 58 linker histone sequences also reveals that these proteins are more similar to invertebrate and plant histone H1 than to histone H1 of vertebrates. A phylogenetic tree deduced from an alignment of the central domain of all known linker histones places H10, H5, and HIM in close vicinity to invertebrate sperm histone H1 proteins and to invertebrate histone H1 proteins encoded by polyadenylated mRNAs. We therefore conclude that the ancestors of the vertebrate linker histones H10, H5, and HIM diverged from the main group of histone H1 proteins before the vertebrate type of histone H1 was established in evolution. We discuss this observation in the general context of linker histone evolution.
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Correspondence to: B. and E. Schulze
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Schulze, E., Schulze, B. The vertebrate linker histones H10, H5, and H1M are descendants of invertebrate “orphon” histone H1 genes. J Mol Evol 41, 833–840 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00173162
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00173162