Summary
An electrophoretic analysis of histone H1 and its fragments was carried out for several orders of insects. A total of more than 500 histone H1 variants were examined. For some of them a study of general molecular structure was performed by the method of incomplete succinylation. The molecular length of the fragment containing the C-terminal domain presumably responsible for chromatin condensation was found to be highly variable. The variance of the logarithm of the electrophoretic mobility of H1, which reflects its molecular length, was estimated for seven insect orders. There was no relationship between this variance and the evolutionary age of an order. On the other hand, the variance turned out to correlate strongly with the recent species number in the order, indicating that the accumulation of variation in H1 molecular length was in line with the general intensity of adaptive processes in the orders. This result seems to provide evidence for an adaptive mode of the evolution of the molecular length of H1. The possible role of H1 variability in adaptive evolution is discussed.
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Berdnikov, V.A., Rozov, S.M., Temnykh, S.V. et al. Adaptive nature of interspecies variation of histone H1 in insects. J Mol Evol 36, 497–507 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02406725
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02406725