The plant homeodomain (PHD) finger is found in proteins implicated in fundamental biological processes, including transcription, replication, DNA damage repair, cell differentiation and survival. This small double-zinc-finger domain functions as an epigenetic effector or reader that binds to posttranslationally modified and unmodified histone H3 tails and recruits transcription factors, catalytic writers and erasers, nucleosome-remodeling complexes, and other components of the epigenetic machinery to specific genomic sites. In this chapter, we review the chromatin-binding mechanisms and biological outcomes associated with binding of the PHD fingers to histone ligands and discuss the structural bases for selectivity of this reader toward histone PTMs.
IntroductionThe plant homeodomain (PHD) finger was discovered in the Arabidopsis protein HAT3.1 in 1993 (Schindler et al. 1993) and has since been found in a variety of proteins implicated in the regulation of chromatin structure and dynamics. The PHD finger is evolutionarily conserved and is present either as a single module or in multiple copies in 218 human proteins (SMART). The ~65-residue cysteinerich sequence of the PHD finger binds two zinc ions in a cross-braced manner. Although similar zinc-coordinating topology is seen in other double zinc fingers, including RING, FYVE, and MYND domains, the PHD finger can be distinguished by its canonical C4HC3 motif (and less common C4HC2H), as compared to the C3HC4 motif of RING, C5C/HC2 of FYVE, and C/HC4C/HHC of MYND. The primary sequences of the PHD fingers show low amino acid similarity;