Neurotransmitters reorganize DNA

Serotonin and dopamine are two examples of neurotransmitters—chemicals that carry messages from one neuron to another. Research published in the last 5 years also showed that serotonin and dopamine can regulate gene expression in the brain by binding to histones, a class of proteins that act like spools for DNA to coil around. A new study published in Nature now shows that another neurotransmitter, histamine, can also bind to histones and does so in a way that helps regulate the body’s circadian clock (2025, DOI: 10.1038/s41586-024 -08371-3 ). The work was led by Ian Maze , a neuroepigeneticist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Howard Hughes Medical Institute who published the initial paper showing that serotonin could bind to histones. In the new study, Maze and colleagues found that histamine could bind to the same site as serotonin and dopamine; that site is a glutamine unit