Isolation of nuclei in media containing an inert polymer to mimic the crowded cytoplasm.

Within cells, the nucleus is surrounded by the cytoplasm which contains diffusible macromolecules at a high concentration (>100 mg/ml). When cells are broken to isolate nuclei by current methods these macromolecules are dispersed, and to reproduce the environment of nuclei in vivo more closely we have developed a method to isolate them in a medium where cytoplasmic macromolecules are replaced by an inert, volume-occupying polymer and which is essentially cation-free. Nuclei isolated by this method resemble closely those prepared by conventional procedures as seen by optical and electron microscopy, and their internal compartments (nucleoli, PML and Cajal bodies, transcription centers, and splicing speckles) and transcriptional activity are conserved. This procedure is efficient for mammalian cells that normally grow in suspension and do not have an extensive cytoskeleton, and requires ~30 min.

DNA of a circular minichromosome linearized by restriction enzymes or other reagents is resistant to further cleavage: an influence of chromatin topology on the accessibility of DNA.

The accessibility of DNA in chromatin is an essential factor in regulating its activities. We studied the accessibility of the DNA in a ∼170 kb circular minichromosome to DNA-cleaving reagents using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis and fibre-fluorescence in situ hybridization on combed DNA molecules. Only one of several potential sites in the minichromosome DNA was accessible to restriction enzymes in permeabilized cells, and in growing cells only a single site at an essentially random position was cut by poisoned topoisomerase II, neocarzinostatin and γ-radiation, which have multiple potential cleavage sites; further sites were then inaccessible in the linearized minichromosomes. Sequential exposure to combinations of these reagents also resulted in cleavage at only a single site. Minichromosome DNA containing single-strand breaks created by a nicking endonuclease to relax any unconstrained superhelicity was also cut at only a single position by a restriction enzyme. Further sites became accessible after ≥95% of histones H2A, H2B and H1, and most non-histone proteins were extracted. These observations suggest that a global rearrangement of the three-dimensional packing and interactions of nucleosomes occurs when a circular minichromosome is linearized and results in its DNA becoming inaccessible to probes.

Isolation of cell nuclei using inert macromolecules to mimic the crowded cytoplasm.

Cell nuclei are commonly isolated and studied in media which include millimolar concentrations of cations, which conserve the nuclear volume by screening the negative charges on chromatin and maintaining its compaction. However, two factors question if these ionic conditions correctly reproduce the environment of nuclei in vivo: the small-scale motion and conformation of chromatin in vivo are not reproduced in isolated nuclei, and experiments and theory suggest that small ions in the cytoplasm are not free in the soluble phase but are predominantly bound to macromolecules. We studied the possible role in maintaining the structure and functions of nuclei in vivo of a further but frequently overlooked property of the cytoplasm, the crowding or osmotic effects caused by diffusible macromolecules whose concentration, measured in several studies, is in the range of 130 mg/ml. Nuclei which conserved their volume in the cell and their ultrastructure seen by electron microscopy were released from K562 cells in media containing the inert polymer 70 kDa Ficoll (50% w/v) or 70 kDa dextran (35% w/v) to replace the diffusible cytoplasmic molecules which were dispersed on cell lysis with digitonin, with 100 microM K-Hepes buffer as the only source of ions. Immunofluorescence labelling and experiments using cells expressing GFP-fusion proteins showed that internal compartments (nucleoli, PML and coiled bodies, foci of RNA polymerase II) were conserved in these nuclei, and nascent RNA transcripts could be elongated. Our observations are consistent with the hypothesis that crowding by diffusible cytoplasmic macromolecules is a crucial but overlooked factor which supports the nucleus in vivo by equilibrating the opposing osmotic pressure cause by the high concentration of macromolecules in the nucleus, and suggest that crowded media provide more physiological conditions to study nuclear structure and functions. They may also help to resolve the long-standing paradox that the small-scale motion and irregular conformation of chromatin seen in vivo are not reproduced in nuclei isolated in conventional ionic media.