Core component of nucleosome. Nucleosomes wrap and compact DNA into chromatin, limiting DNA accessibility to the cellular machineries which require DNA as a template. Histones thereby play a central role in transcription regulation, DNA repair, DNA replication and chromosomal stability. DNA accessibility is regulated via a complex set of post-translational modifications of histones, also called histone code, and nucleosome remodeling. H3 is deposited into chromatin exclusively through a DNA replication-coupled pathway that can be associated with either DNA duplication or DNA repair synthesis during meiotic homologous recombination.
