function: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.,PTM:Monoubiquitination of Lys-121 by the RNF20/40 complex gives a specific tag for epigenetic transcriptional activation and is also prerequisite for histone H3 'Lys-4' and 'Lys-79' methylation. It also functions cooperatively with the FACT dimer to stimulate elongation by RNA polymerase II.,PTM:Phosphorylated on Ser-15 by STK4/MST1 during apoptosis; which facilitates apoptotic chromatin condensation. Also phosphorylated on Ser-15 in response to DNA double strand breaks (DSBs), and in correlation with somatic hypermutation and immunoglobulin class-switch recombination.,similarity:Belongs to the histone H2B family.,subunit:The nucleosome is a histone octamer containing two molecules each of H2A, H2B, H3 and H4 assembled in one H3-H4 heterotetramer and two H2A-H2B heterodimers. The octamer wraps approximately 147 bp of DNA.,