Abstract. We have monitored histone acetylation during conjugation of the ciliated protozoan Tetrahymena thermophila using antibodies against the tetraacetylated form of H4 histone (Pfeffer, U., N. Ferrari, and G. Vidali. 1986. J. Biol. Chem. 261:2496-2498. During meiosis, the three prezygotic divisions, fertilization, and the first postzygotic division, micronuclei, do not contain highly acetylated forms of H4 histone. However, after the second postzygotic division, when anteriorly located micronuclei begin to develop into new macronuclei, they are strongly stained by the anti-tetraacetylated H4 histone antibody. In the old macronucleus, histones are actively deacetylated when it has ceased to transcribe but before it is eliminated. Histone acetylation processes analyzed here appear to be correlated to the commitment to transcription rather than to the transcription process itself. This is in good correlation with evidence we have obtained in chick erythrocyte nuclei during reactivation upon fusion with mammalian cells (Pfeffer, U., N. Ferrari, E Tosetti, and G. Vidali. 1988. Exp. Cell Res. 178:25-30). Furthermore, it becomes clear from our data that histone acetylation occurs in close correlation to the position of nuclei within the cytoplasm of T. thermophila.Mechanisms that control differential histone acetylation and deacetylation are discussed.S INCE the original observation, histone acetylation has been correlated to transcription and considerable evidence has accumulated indicating that this reversible postsynthetic modification of lysine residues in the aminoterminal portion of core histones plays a key role in the regulation of gene expression (for a review see reference 2).Different methods have been developed to fractionate chromatin depending on its transcriptional activity and accordingly, it has been found that fractions containing actively transcribed genes were enriched in highly acetylated histones (1,17,33). Recent analyses using anti-acetyl-lysine antibodies have established that a given gene is associated with highly acetylated histones when it is transcribed (23), although it cannot be ruled out that genes competent to be transcribed, but inactive at the moment of analysis, may also contain acetylated histones.Nucleosomes undergo reversible conformational changes during transcriptional activation (10, 32), histones are absent from promoter sequences of active genes (25), nucleosomes inhibit initiation of transcription but do not inhibit elongation of initiated transcripts (27, 28) and at least H4 histone is retained on a highly transcribed gene (35). The contact points between nucleosomal DNA and H4 histone have been analyzed and a highly basic cluster in the amino-terminal portion has been shown to be involved in sharp bending of the DNA double helix (18). Interestingly, this cluster encompasses lysine at position 16 which is the first to be acetylated in vivo in calf thymus (15) and, moreover, this region is in close contact to a site 55-65 bp from the end of the nucleosomal DNA, which ...