The functional interactome of site-specifically ubiquitylated linker histone H1

Decoding the role of histone posttranslational modifications (PTMs) is key to understand the fundamental process of epigenetic regulation. While this process is well studied for core histones and many of their PTMs, this is not the case for linker histone H1 in general and its ubiquitylation in particular due to a lack of proper tools. Here, we report on the generation of site-specifically mono-ubiquitylated H1.2 via click chemistry and identify its ubiquitin-dependent interactome on a proteome-wide scale. We show that the H1 interactome is generally modulated by ubiquitylation and that site-specific ubiquitylation results in overlapping, but distinct interactomes. We further demonstrate that site-specific ubiquitylation of H1 affects the interaction with enzymes relevant for deubiquitylation and deacetylation. We finally show that site-specific ubiquitylation at position K64 impacts H1-dependent chromatosome assembly as well as H1-induced phase separation. In summary, we demonstrate that site-specific ubiquitylation is a general functional regulator for linker histone H1.