Figure 1. Separation of nucleosomes and hexasomes made with the Widom 601 sequence.
(A) Hexasomes but not nucleosomes migrate differently by native PAGE when flanking DNA is on the left or right of the 601 sequence. These two gels, poured from the same solution, are representative of 0-601-80 and 80-601-0 reconstitutions made using histone octamer. (B) Separation of hexasomes from nucleosomes. Shown is a representative purification over a 7% native acrylamide column using a Prep Cell apparatus. The elution fractions were analyzed by native PAGE. (C) Purified nucleosome and hexasome pools, analyzed by native PAGE. (D) As shown by SDS-PAGE, the hexasome species lack one H2A/H2B dimer. The bar graph is a quantification of gel band intensities from three different nucleosome/hexasome purifications. All histone bands were normalized to histone H4. The H2A and H2B bands often migrate close together, and therefore the relative intensities of H2A/H2B bands are shown summed together. Within each nucleosome/hexasome pair, the intensity of H2A/H2B in hexasomes was 47 ± 6% of that of nucleosomes.