A chromatosome is a result of
histone H1
Histone H1 is one of the five main histone protein families which are components of chromatin in eukaryotic cells. Though highly conserved, it is nevertheless the most variable histone in sequence across species.
Structure
Metazoan H1 prote ...
binding to a
nucleosome, which contains a
histone octamer
A histone octamer is the eight-protein complex found at the center of a nucleosome core particle. It consists of two copies of each of the four core histone proteins ( H2A, H2B, H3, and H4). The octamer assembles when a tetramer, containing two ...
and
DNA. The chromatosome contains 166
base pairs of DNA. 146 base pairs are from the DNA wrapped around the
histone core of the nucleosome. The remaining 20 base pairs are from the DNA of histone H1 binding to the nucleosome.
Histone H1
Histone H1 is one of the five main histone protein families which are components of chromatin in eukaryotic cells. Though highly conserved, it is nevertheless the most variable histone in sequence across species.
Structure
Metazoan H1 prote ...
, and its other variants, are referred to as
linker histones. Protruding from the linker histone are
linker DNA
In molecular biology, linker DNA is double-stranded DNA (38-53 base pairs long) in between two nucleosome cores that, in association with histone H1, holds the cores together. Linker DNA is seen as the string in the "beads and string model", w ...
. Chromatosomes are connected to each other when the linker DNA of one chromatosome binds to the linker histone of another chromatosome.
[{{Cite journal, last=Widom, first=J., date=1998, title=Structure, dynamics, and function of chromatin in vitro, journal=Annual Review of Biophysics and Biomolecular Structure, volume=27, pages=285–327, doi=10.1146/annurev.biophys.27.1.285, issn=1056-8700, pmid=9646870]
Picture
https://www.rcsb.org/pdb/explore.do?structureId=4QLC
References
Molecular biology