ISSN:
1432-119X
Source:
Springer Online Journal Archives 1860-2000
Topics:
Biology
,
Medicine
Notes:
Summary We investigated the effect of salt on the fluorescence staining procedure for quantification of the amount of DNA in cell nuclei in situ. For this, NaCl was added at various concentrations to the Hoechst 33258 fluorochrome (Hoe) medium for staining DNA. The fluorescence intensity of free DNA-Hoe solution was not changed by the addition of NaCl, but that of the nuclei-Hoe complex in situ increased 4-fold on increasing the NaCl concentration up to 1 M. SDS polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis showed that histones H1, H2A, and H2B dissociated from cell nuclei in the presence of 1 M NaCl, resulting in increasing accessibility of DNA to the fluorochrome. The applicability of the NaCl-aided fluorescence staining method was evaluated by measuring the ploidy classes of various cells. The amount of DNA in spermatozoa is half that in 2n hepatocytes, but by the conventional Hoe staining procedure the fluorescence intensity of spermatozoa is higher than that of 2n hepatocytes, due to differences in accessibility of the dye to DNA. In contrast, by the NaCl-aided procedure, the fluorescence intensity of 2n hepatocytes was twice that of spermatozoa. The effectiveness of the NaCl-aided Hoe staining method was checked using cultivated human gingival cells and hepatocytes of LEC rats with hereditary hepatitis. In all cases, reasonable proportionality between the fluorescence intensity and the amount of DNA was observed.
Type of Medium:
Electronic Resource
URL:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00495018
Permalink