The Histone Database

Steven Sullivan

Daniel Sink

Kenneth Trout

Izabela Makalowska

Patrick Taylor

Andreas Baxevanis

David Landsman

Computational Biology Branch, National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Building 45, Room 6AN12J, 45 Center Drive, MSC 6510, Bethesda, MD 20892-6510, USA and ^{Genome Technology Branch, National Human Genome Research Institute, National Institutes of Health, Building 49, Room 4A-22, Bethesda, MD 20892-4470, USA}

^{To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +1 301 435 5981; Fax: +1 301 480 2918; Email: landsman@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov Present address: Izabela Makalowska, Department of Biology and The Life Sciences Consortium, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802–5301, USA The authors wish it to be known that, in their opinion, the first two authors should be regarded as joint First Authors}

Received 2001 Sep 20; Accepted 2001 Sep 28.

Abstract

Histone proteins are often noted for their high degree of sequence conservation. It is less often recognized that the histones are a heterogeneous protein family. Furthermore, several classes of non-histone proteins containing the histone fold motif exist. Novel histone and histone fold protein sequences continue to be added to public databases every year. The Histone Database (http://genome.nhgri.nih.gov/histones/) is a searchable, periodically updated collection of histone fold-containing sequences derived from sequence-similarity searches of public databases. Sequence sets are presented in redundant and non-redundant FASTA form, hotlinked to GenBank sequence files. Partial sequences are also now included in the database, which has considerably augmented its taxonomic coverage. Annotated alignments of full-length non-redundant sets of sequences are now available in both web-viewable (HTML) and downloadable (PDF) formats. The database also provides summaries of current information on solved histone fold structures, post-translational modifications of histones, and the human histone gene complement.

Abstract

Numbers in parentheses represent the content prior to the August 2001 update.

Species counts are not cumulative since one species can be represented in multiple histone classes.

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