A unified phylogeny-based nomenclature for histone variants.
Histone variants are non-allelic protein isoforms that play key roles in diversifying chromatin structure. The known number of such variants has greatly increased in recent years, but the lack of naming conventions for them has led to a variety of naming styles, multiple synonyms and misleading homographs that obscure variant relationships and complicate database searches. We propose here a unified nomenclature for variants of all five classes of histones that uses consistent but flexible naming conventions to produce names that are informative and readily searchable. The nomenclature builds on historical usage and incorporates phylogenetic relationships, which are strong predictors of structure and function. A key feature is the consistent use of punctuation to represent phylogenetic divergence, making explicit the relationships among variant subtypes that have previously been implicit or unclear. We recommend that by default new histone variants be named with organism-specific paralog-number suffixes that lack phylogenetic implication, while letter suffixes be reserved for structurally distinct clades of variants. For clarity and searchability, we encourage the use of descriptors that are separate from the phylogeny-based variant name to indicate developmental and other properties of variants that may be independent of structure.
Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Basic Sciences Division, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Seattle, WA, 98109, USA. steveh@fhcrc.org.
Paul B
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Talbert
Kami
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Ahmad
Geneviève
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Almouzni
Juan
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Ausió
Frederic
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Berger
Prem L
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Bhalla
William M
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Bonner
W Zacheus
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Cande
Brian P
BP
Chadwick
Simon W L
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Chan
George A M
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Cross
Liwang
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Cui
Stefan I
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Dimitrov
Detlef
D
Doenecke
José M
JM
Eirin-López
Martin A
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Gorovsky
Sandra B
SB
Hake
Barbara A
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Hamkalo
Sarah
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Holec
Steven E
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Jacobsen
Kinga
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Kamieniarz
Saadi
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Khochbin
Andreas G
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Ladurner
David
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Landsman
John A
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Latham
Benjamin
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Loppin
Harmit S
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Malik
William F
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Marzluff
John R
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Pehrson
Jan
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Postberg
Robert
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Schneider
Mohan B
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Singh
M Mitchell
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Smith
Eric
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Thompson
Maria-Elena
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Torres-Padilla
David John
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Tremethick
Bryan M
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Turner
Jakob Harm
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Waterborg
Heike
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Wollmann
Ramesh
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Yelagandula
Bing
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Zhu
Steven
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Henikoff