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. 1979 Oct 10;7(3):611–623. doi: 10.1093/nar/7.3.611

Complexes of the arginine-rich histone tetramer (H3)2(H4)2 with negatively supercoiled DNA: electron microscopy and chemical cross-linking.

J O Thomas, P Oudet
PMCID: PMC328042  PMID: 503840

Abstract

Tetramers of the arginine-rich histones H3 and H4 associate with supercoiled SV40 DNA either singly, giving tetrameric nucleoprotein complexes or in pairs giving octameric complexes, both of which are visualized as beads in the electron microscope. The relative amounts of the two complexes may be revealed by complete cross-linking of the proteins, followed by analysis in SDS-polyacrylamide gels. By electron microscopy of unmodified and of cross-linked complexes, both the tetrameric and the octameric complexes are shown to have a diameter of 8-9 nm and to contain about 145 base pairs (a nucleosome core length) of DNA. The compaction of the DNA in both cases is thus similar to that in the nucleosome, which has a diameter of about 12.5 nm and contains 200 base pairs of DNA.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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