ATP-Driven Exchange of Histone H2AZ Variant Catalyzed by SWR1 Chromatin Remodeling Complex

Gaku Mizuguchi, Xuetong Shen, Joe Landry, Wei-Hua Wu,
Subhojit Sen, Carl Wu

Laboratory of Molecular Cell Biology
National Cancer Institute
National Institutes of Health
Building 37, Room 6068
Bethesda, Maryland 20892-4255

Correspondence. Tel: 301-496-3029. Email: carlwu@helix.nih.gov

Abstract

The conserved histone variant H2AZ has an important role in the regulation of gene expression and the establishment of a buffer to the spread of silent heterochromatin. How histone variants such as H2AZ are incorporated into nucleosomes has been obscure. We have found that Swr1, a Swi2/Snf2-related ATPase, is the catalytic core of a multi-subunit, histone variant exchanger that efficiently replaces conventional histone H2A with histone H2AZ in nucleosome arrays. Swr1 is required for the deposition of histone H2AZ at specific chromosome locations in vivo, and Swr1 and H2AZ commonly regulate a subset of yeast genes. These findings define a new role for the ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling machinery.

Microarray Data Sets