Synchrotron-radiation circular-dichroism spectroscopy was used to reveal that the DNA damage response induces a decrement of α-helix and an increment of β-strand contents of histone H3-H4 extracted from X-ray-irradiated human HeLa cells. The trend of the structural alteration was qualitatively opposite to that of our previously reported results for histone H2A-H2B. These results strongly suggest that histones share roles in DNA damage responses, particularly in DNA repair processes and chromatin remodeling, via a specific structural alteration of each histone.
Keywords: DNA repair; chromatin remodeling; circular dichroism; histone dynamics; post-translational modification; synchrotron radiation.
© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Japan Radiation Research Society and Japanese Society for Radiation Oncology.