Nature Methods
- 4, 483 - 485 (2007)
Published online: 7 May 2007; | doi:10.1038/nmeth1049
High-pressure treatment of polytene chromosomes improves structural resolutionDmitri V Novikov1, Igor Kireev1, 2 & Andrew S Belmont11
Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, B107 Chemical and Life Sciences Building, 601 S. Goodwin Ave., Urbana, Illinois 61801, USA. 2
Department of Electron Microscopy, A.N. Belozersky Institute of Physico-Chemical Biology, Moscow State University, Moscow, 119899, Russia.
Correspondence should be addressed to Andrew S Belmont asbel@uiuc.edu The exceptional cytology provided by polytene chromosomes has made Drosophila melanogaster a premier model for chromosome studies, but full exploitation of polytene cytology is impeded by the difficulty in preparing high-quality chromosome spreads. Here we describe use of high pressure to produce formaldehyde-fixed chromosome spreads, which upon light-microscopy examination reveal structural detail previously observed only in electron microscopy preparations. We demonstrate applications to immunofluorescence and in situ hybridization.
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