Quantification of parental and new histones H3, H4 and H2A by mass spectrometry: analysis of their dynamics along cell cycle progression in WT and MCM2-2A mutant mouse ESCs

During DNA replication parental, nucleosomic histones are segregated almost symmetrically to the two daughter DNA strands enabling mitotic inheritance of histones and their PTMs. In MCM2 histone-binding mutant ESCs (MCM2-2A), histones are recycled asymmetrically to the leading strand. To evaluate if loss of parental histones contributes to the asymmetry, we tracked new and old histones quantitatively by pulse-Triple-SILAC-MS. The quantification showed no change in dilution and incorporation dynamics in MCM2-2A cells, demonstrating that parental histones are not lost at replication forks but re-routed from the lagging to the leading strand.