title: How mammals pack their sperm: a variant matter.
abstract: Producing competent gametes is essential for transmitting genetic information throughout generations. Spermatogenesis is a unique example of rearrangements of genome packaging to ensure fertilization. After meiosis, spermatids undergo drastic morphological changes, perhaps the most dramatic ones occurring in their nuclei, including the transition into a protamine-packaged genome. In this issue of Genes & Development, Montellier and colleagues (pp. 1680-1692) shed new light on the molecular mechanisms regulating this transition by ascribing for the first time a function to a histone variant, TH2B, in the regulation of this process.
authors.affiliation: U964, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale INSERM, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique CNRS, Institut de Génétique et de Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire, F-67404 Illkirch, Cu de Strasbourg, France.
authors.forename: Ana
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Boskovic
authors.forename: Maria-Elena
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Torres-Padilla
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002843:Chromatin / Q000378:metabolism*; D005260:Female; D006657:Histones / Q000378:metabolism*; D008297:Male; D011479:Protamines / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D002843:Chromatin; D006657:Histones; D011479:Protamines; C015786:deoxyribonucleoprotamine; C081018:histone H2B type 1-A
keywords: BRDT; H2AZ; histone eviction; male contraception; male infertility; reprogramming; sex chromosome inactivation
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