Reference Report

Reference
Citation	Bonnefoy, E., Orsi, G.A., Couble, P., Loppin, B. (2007). The essential role of Drosophila HIRA for de novo assembly of paternal chromatin at fertilization. PLoS Genet. 3(10): e182. (Export to RIS)
FlyBase ID	FBrf0200564
Publication Type	Research paper
PubMed ID	17967064
PubMed Abstract	In many animal species, the sperm DNA is packaged with male germ line--specific chromosomal proteins, including protamines. At fertilization, these non-histone proteins are removed from the decondensing sperm nucleus and replaced with maternally provided histones to form the DNA replication competent male pronucleus. By studying a point mutant allele of the Drosophila Hira gene, we previously showed that HIRA, a conserved replication-independent chromatin assembly factor, was essential for the assembly of paternal chromatin at fertilization. HIRA permits the specific assembly of nucleosomes containing the histone H3.3 variant on the decondensing male pronucleus. We report here the analysis of a new mutant allele of Drosophila Hira that was generated by homologous recombination. Surprisingly, phenotypic analysis of this loss of function allele revealed that the only essential function of HIRA is the assembly of paternal chromatin during male pronucleus formation. This HIRA-dependent assembly of H3.3 nucleosomes on paternal DNA does not require the histone chaperone ASF1. Moreover, analysis of this mutant established that protamines are correctly removed at fertilization in the absence of HIRA, thus demonstrating that protamine removal and histone deposition are two functionally distinct processes. Finally, we showed that H3.3 deposition is apparently not affected in Hira mutant embryos and adults, suggesting that different chromatin assembly machineries could deposit this histone variant.
DOI	10.1371/journal.pgen.0030182
Related Publication(s)
Recent Updates
Description	What does this section display? This section contains items that were added to this record for each release. It currently only tracks new links between this FlyBase report and other FlyBase data classes (e.g. genes, references, stocks) or controlled vocabulary terms (e.g. GO, anatomy terms). What does this section not display? This section does not currently display links that were removed or gene model changes.
Update Feed	Click the icon below to subscribe to this FlyBase record and receive updates automatically through your feed reader.
FB2013_03
FB2013_02
All updates	Click here to see a list of all updates to this record from FB2010_08 and on.
Associated Information
Comments
Associated Files
Other Information
Secondary IDs	FBrf0202777
Language of Publication	English
Additional Languages of Abstract
Also Published As
Parent Publication
Publication Type	Journal
Abbreviation	PLoS Genet.
Title	PLoS Genetics
Publication Year	2005-
ISBN/ISSN	1553-7404 1553-7390
Data from Reference
Aberrations (2)
	Df(1)ct4b1 Df(3R)sbd45
Alleles (11)
	Hira^185b Hira^+tLa Hira^{HR1.T:Zzzz\FLAG} Hira^HR1 Hira^T:Zzzz\FLAG His3.3A^T:Zzzz\FLAG His3^{His3.3A.T:Zzzz\FLAG} Mst35Ba^{T:Avic\GFP-EGFP} Mst35Bb^{T:Avic\GFP-EGFP} snky¹ sra^A108
Constructs (6)
	P{Hira-Flag} P{His3.3A-Flag} P{His3-Flag} P{protamineA-eGFP} P{protamineB-eGFP} P{pW25-Hira-HR1-Flag}
Genes (10)
	asf1 Hira His3 His3.3A His4 Mst35Ba Mst35Bb snky sra T:Zzzz\FLAG
Natural transposons (1)
	P-element