Histone modifications and where to find them
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A cheat sheet for which histone modification marks which genomic element.
Do you ever wonder, ”Where was that histone modification found again? Was it an active promoter or enhancer?” If so, we’ve put together this guide for you so that you never have to go back to the literature to find out!
We’ve listed the most common histone modifications and which genomic regions they mark, ie where you can expect to find them in your ChIP/ChIPseq experiments. To give that little bit extra, we’ve also listed for you the most specific antibodies that recognize those histone modifications.
| Histone mark | Where to find it | Antibody |
| H3K4me1 | Active enhancers | ab176877 |
| H3K4me3 | Promoters of active genes, bivalent domains | ab213224 |
| H3K9ac | Active enhancers and promoters | ab177177 |
| H3K27ac | Active enhancers and promoters | ab177178 |
| H3K36me3 | Transcribed regions | ab9050 |
| H3K79me2 | Transcribed regions | ab177184 |
| H3K9me3 | Heterochromatin, satellite repeats, gene-poor regions | ab176916 |
| H3K27me3 | Repressed promoters in gene-rich regions, developmental regulators, bivalent domains | ab192985 |
| Gamma H2A.X | DNA double-strand breaks | ab81299 |
| H3S10P | Whole chromosomes in mitosis | ab177218 |
| H4K16ac | Reduced in cancer at repetitive sequences, active genes and enhancers in ESCs. Inhibits formation of high order chromatin structure. | ab109463 |
Green = generally associated with transcriptionally active regions; red = generally associated with transcriptionally repressed regions; grey = other functions.
References:
- 1. Greer, E. L. & Shi, Y. Histone methylation: a dynamic mark in health, disease and inheritance. Nat. Rev. Genet. 13, 343–57 (2012).
- 2. Voigt, P., Tee, W.W., and Reinberg, D. A double take on bivalent promoters. Genes Dev. 27, 1318-1338 (2013).
- 3. Barski, A., Cuddapah, S., Cui, K., Roh, T.Y., Schones, D.E., Wang, Z., Wei, G., Chepelev, I., and Zhao, K. High-resolution profiling of histone methylations in the human genome. Cell 129, 823-837 (2007).
- 4. Kim, J. & Kim, H. Recruitment and biological consequences of histone modification of H3K27me3 and H3K9me3. ILAR J. 53(3-4):232-9 (2012).