Cracking the death code: apoptosis-related histone modifications.

The degradation and compaction of chromatin are long-standing hallmark features of apoptosis. The histones, chief protein components of chromatin, are subjected to a wide range of post-translational modifications. An increasing body of evidence suggests that combinations of epigenetic histone modifications influence the overall chromatin structure and have clear functional consequences in cellular processes including apoptosis. This review describes the work to date on the post-translational modification of histones during apoptosis, their regulation by enzymatic complexes and discusses the existence of the apoptotic histone code.