Epigenetic Inheritance Through Replication-Coupled Parental Histone Recycling

Epigenetic inheritance of repressed chromatin domains plays a central role in the stable silencing of cell type–specific genes and transposons in eukaryotes. Silent chromatin domains are associated with repressive histone modifications, and their propagation requires a read-write mechanism involving recognition of histone modifications by enzymes that also catalyze them. The recycling of parental histones during DNA replication plays a crucial role in maintaining chromatin states by providing the substrate for read-write enzymes. Here we describe recent advances in understanding how the DNA replication machinery and its associated histone chaperones mediate symmetrical parental histone transfer to newly replicated daughter DNA strands and evidence that this process is required for the epigenetic inheritance of silent chromatin domains.