Abstract
This paper reports a new method for investigating the changes in and the distribution of higher-order structures of native chromatin fibers in response to changes in salt concentration. To achieve this, we developed a microfluidic platform that enabled us to isolate chromatin fibers non-destructively from single cells and then tag them with microbeads as positional markers. These were observed that chromatin fibers were elongated non-uniformly and continuously along a chromatin fiber as the salt concentration was increased from 0 mM to 250 mM NaCl and stepwisely between 500 mM and 750 mM NaCl, and their fluorescence of histone H3-RFP decreased over 1000 mM NaCl. These results suggest that binding proteins dissociate between 500 mM and 750 mM NaCl, and histones dissociate over 1000 mM NaCl.
