HIGH-RESOLUTION IMAGING OF CHROMOSOME STRUCTURE OF BARLEY USING AFM

S. Sugiyama¹, X. Liu², T. Yoshino¹, S. Hagiwara¹ and T. Ohtani¹

1) National Food Research Institut
2) Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute

Using AFM, nano-scale structures of the air-dried and the critical point-dried chromosomes of barley were investigated. The AFM imaging of the air-dried chromosomes indicated that their surfaces were rather rough, especially at their edges, and their heights were only 0.2-0.3 mm. Contrary, the surfaces of the critical point-dried chromosomes were very smooth. The chromosomes maintained the heights of around 1.4 mm, suggesting that the majority of the original structure was not severely damaged. We will obserbed the surface structure changes caused by extracting DNA-binding proteins. The protein extraction was performed by the re-hydration of the chromosomes with distilled water followed by treatment with 2 M NaCl solution. The AFM images, obtained here by the combination method of the high-resolution AFM imaging and chemical treatment, offer the potential to directly analyze the DNA-protein structure of chromosomes.