The structure of nucleohistone. Hydrodynamic behaviour at high ionic strength.

Abstract

The viscosity of histone‐depleted nucleohistone has been measured at high and low ionic strength. Native nucleohistone at low ionic strength and f1‐depleted nucleohistone at both low and high ionic strength all have the same intrinsic viscosity of 10.0 dl/g. This implies that these molecules are not flexible but behave in solution as rigid particles. On the assumption that they are rods they have a weight‐average length of 1160 ± 120 nm and diameter 5.6 ± 0.3 nm. The DNA is compressed in the rod to give an increase in mass per unit length for the DNA of 5.0 ± 0.5.By contrast the intrinsic viscosity of nucleohistone depleted of f1, f2a2 and 75% of F2b and F3, varies with ionic strength in the manner typical of a flexible polyelectrolyte. The shapes of the sedimentation boundaries measured at high ionic strength of depleted nucleohistone show that the dissociation of histone from DNA takes place so that all molecules are depleted to the same extent. It thus has a conformation intermediate between that of native nucleohistone and DNA.Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis of histones removed by 1.0 M NaCl using a technique capable of resolving all five main histone fractions, shows that if one fraction only is responsible for supercoiling nucleohistone it must be f2a2.