Isolation and characterization of protein A24, a "histone-like" non-histone chromosomal protein.

In earlier studies, the nucleolar levels of protein A24 were found to be markedly decreased in the nucleolar hypertrophy induced by thioacetamide or during liver regeneration (Ballal, N.R., Goldknopf, I.L., Goldberg, D.A., and Busch, H. (1974) Life Sci. 14, 1835-1845; Ballal, N.R., Kang, Y.-J., Olson, M.O.-J., and Busch, H.J. Biol. Chem. 250, 5921-5925). To determine the role of protein A24, methods were developed for its isolation in highly purified form. Milligram quantities of highly purified protein A24 were isolated from the 0.4 N H2SO4-soluble proteins of calf thymus chromatin by exclusion chromatography on Sephadex G-100, followed by preparative polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Protein A24 was highly purified as shown by its migration as a single spot on two-dimensional polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, its single NH2-terminal amino acid, methionine, and the production of approximately 50 peptides by tryptic digestion. Like histones 2A, 2B, 3, and 4. A24 was extractable from chromatin with 0.4 N H2SO4 or 3 M NaCl/7 M urea, but unlike most non-histone proteins or histone 1, protein A24 was not extracted with 0.35 M NaCl, 0.5 M HClO4, or 0.6 M NaCl. Protein A24 was present in only 1.9% of the total amount of histones 2A, 2B, 3 and 4; its molecular weight is 27,000.