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* National Centre for Biological Sciences, TIFR, Bangalore-560065, India; and
Raman Research Institute, Bangalore, India
Correspondence: Address reprint requests to G. V. Shivashankar, E-mail: shiva{at}ncbs.res.in.
| ABSTRACT |
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| INTRODUCTION |
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| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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HeLa cells were transfected with an expression vector encoding histone H2B-EGFP, H1.1-EGFP, or plain EGFP. The promoters driving the expression were EF1
for H2B-EGFP and CMV for H1.1 and EGFP vectors. Stables of HeLa-H2B-EGFP and HeLa-EGFP were prepared by antibiotic selection using blasticidin and G418, respectively. HeLa-H1.1-EGFP was transiently transfected 1216 h before the experiment. Cells were grown in DMEM (Gibco, Life Technologies, Paisley, UK) supplemented with 10% FBS (Gibco), glutamine and penicillin/streptavidin at 37°C, and 5% CO2 in glass-bottom petri dishes. Before imaging, the medium was replaced by M1 medium (150 mM NaCl, 20 mM HEPES, 1 mM MgCl2) supplemented with 1% glucose.
Cell preparation
For depleting adenosine triphosphate (ATP), dishes at midlog phase were taken and first washed with phosphate buffered saline (PBS) after which they were treated with 10 mM NaN3 (Sigma, St. Louis, MO) and 6 mM 2-deoxy-D-glucose (Sigma) in M1 without glucose and were left in the incubator at 37°C for 1 h after which their medium was replaced by the imaging medium. For inducing apoptosis cells were treated with 10 µM of staurosporine (Sigma) and used for imaging after 4 h of incubation. Cells were again washed and M1 medium was used for imaging. For cell phase experiments, dishes were used with cells at midlog phase of their growth and were further grown on the microscope using an incubator (Olympus, Tokyo, Japan) whose temperature was maintained at 37°C and humidity and CO2 (
5%) maintained optimal for cell growth. Cells were grown in nonphenol red DMEM supplemented with 5% FBS.
Imaging
Anisotropy images were captured on a Nikon/Olympus (Tokyo, Japan) microscope with 100x/1.4 NA objective and images captured with ICCD cameras (Roper Scientific, Duluth, GA). Mercury arc source was used for the excitation light, which was then selected for vertical polarization using a sheet polarizer (Melles Griot, Carlsbad, CA). The light collected was split into its parallel and perpendicular polarization components using a polarizing beam splitter (Melles Griot) or by swapping between two polarizers (Melles Griot) parallel and perpendicular to the excitation. Images were captured using V++ Digital Optics (Auckland, New Zealand) software and analyzed using LabView. The cell population imaged is asynchronous but excludes mitosis altogether except for the growth phase tracking experiment. For polarization modulation experiments, linearly polarized light from an Argon-ion laser (50 mW, 488 nm, Spectra-Physics, Mountain View, CA) is rotated through 180° using an electro-optic modulator (EOM, NewFocus) followed by a quarter wave plate (Melles Griot) and directed to the 100x/1.4 NA objective in a microscope (IX70, Olympus) for confocal excitation. The fluorescence collected from the sample using a 50-µm pinhole is selected for parallel polarization using a polarizer (Melles Griot) and detected using an avalanche photodiode (EG&G, Wellesey, MA). For polarization modulation, the voltage input to the EOM is modulated in steps with an angular resolution of 2.8° or 11.25° and moved 180° each scan (see Supplementary Material). At each angle the fluorescence is measured using NIDAQ and LabView and the process is repeated for all angles. The raw fluorescence data are analyzed by first subtracting a baseline to account for the polarization-dependent response of the detection system and then the base-subtracted data are checked for peaks. It is observed that the results are the same for both angular resolutions (2.8° and 11.25°). However, to save time per scan so as not to have artifacts due to chromatin movements, all experiments reported were done at 11.25° angular resolution. Controls were done on rhodamine crystal and EGFP solution to establish the method of order parameterization by peak heights (see Supplementary Material, Fig. S3).
| RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS |
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and plotted with color coding to differentiate various levels of fluidic regions. Highly fluidic regions (lower anisotropy) are violet to blue in color and compacted regions are white (higher anisotropy). For all the above experiments it was ensured that the changes in anisotropy values were not an artifact of variations in fluorescence intensity values (Supplementary Material, Fig. S1). It is demonstrated using polytene chromosomes from Drosophila larvae salivary glands (Fig. 1 a; Fig. S1 a) that anisotropy can distinguish between the two states of chromatin assembly showing distinct band and interband regions (9
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Local chromatin fluidity is sensitive to ATP depletion or cell death
The dependence of packing heterogeneity on the active state of the cell was studied by using both core histones (H2B-EGFP) and linker histones (H1.1-EGFP) as probes for the chromatin structure. Although H2B is an integral part of chromatin for all levels of folding, H1.1 and other linker subtypes are known to stabilize higher order structures of the chromatin. Therefore, comparing heterogeneity maps observed with H2B and H1.1 should contrast the contribution of chromatin structural perturbations as opposed to the individual responses of the probes. Spatial heterogeneity was quantified by plotting anisotropy line scans and distributions (Supplementary Material, Fig. S1) for the nucleus of the cells imaged. The mean (r) and standard deviation (sd(r)) of the anisotropy values were obtained and compared between various systems. Because different cells of the same population have variability in their compaction status originating from the dissimilar growth phases as well the intrinsic causes, trends in r and sd(r) reported here are single cell features observed for the whole population. The heterogeneity maps observed with H2B-EGFP, H1.1-EGFP, and EGFP molecules evidenced that the histones are packed into micron-scale substructures in the nucleus, as shown in Fig. 2 a whereas the noninteracting EGFP is found diffused in the nucleus. H2B-EGFP shows various rotational mobilities in the nucleus with a relatively narrow standard deviation of anisotropy (H2B-EGFPsdWT = 0 .013 (6.8% deviation)). In contrast, the map of the linker histone, H1.1-EGFP, showed a less heterogeneous environment (H1.1-EGFPsdWT = 0.010 (5% deviation)). The lower sd(r) for linker proteins is consistent with the dynamic interaction model of the linker histones (14
,15
); whereas the core histones are mostly immobile, a large fraction of linker histones are under continuous transit from one binding site to another. To find out the contribution to the heterogeneity arising due to the nuclear architecture itself, histone heterogeneity maps were contrasted with free EGFP, a noninteracting molecule in the cell nucleus. Free EGFP shows negligible heterogeneity as compared to the histones (EGFPsdWT = 0.005 (2.7% deviation)). The spatial compaction for all three cases is compared by plotting both the mean anisotropy value (r) over the nucleus as well as the standard deviation (sd(r)) (Fig. 2 b). The values reported are averaged over 45 cells each and the error bars correspond to the standard deviation corresponding to the cell-to-cell variations in the quantities plotted. Fig. 2 b shows increasing sd(r) from EGFP to H1.1-EGFP to H2B-EGFP cells.
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Apoptosis is yet another process where the state of chromatin is drastically altered and the chromatin is known to both fragment as well as aggregate (18
). When apoptosis is induced (10 µM staurosporine), the heterogeneity is altered to a state where regions on the chromatin show anisotropy values that are distinctly either low or high (Fig. 2) (H2B-EGFPsdStau = 0.022 (12% deviation)). H1.1-EGFP showed less increase (H1.1-EGFPsdStau = 0.016 (8.4% deviation)) and for plain EGFP (EGFPsdStau = 0.008 (3.8% deviation)) the values remain low though higher than the untreated population. Once again the disruption of the gradation in compaction is observed in consequence to the activation of the programmed death machinery of the cell. It is therefore inferred that the maintenance of the normal chromatin heterogeneity requires active cellular processes that keep a balance between opened up and closed structures by creating a large number of intermediate structures. Fluorescence anisotropy gives here the range of the chromatin compaction levels present in the cell. Core histones due to their greater interaction with DNA and higher packing in the chromatin show maximal heterogeneity in case of structural perturbations. The higher mobility of linker histones keeps them less heterogeneously distributed in the nucleus than core histones but their binding to the chromatin fiber at specific linker DNA coordinates results in the spatial distribution still partially resembling that of chromatin. However, while anisotropy gives the compaction states it is essential to exploit different approaches to probe the positional order. For this, a fluorescence polarization-based method has been used next to address the long-range positional organization of the compacted chromatin state.
Positional order of local chromatin assembly and its remodeling
Various imaging techniques suggest that the packing of chromatin within the cell nucleus may be associated with a degree of long-range nucleosome ordering. To address this, a fluorescence polarization-based method has been devised to quantify the extent of positional ordering of chromatin. Long-range ordering of the chromatin should in principle result in a spatially periodic arrangement of the associated fluorescently labeled histones, H2B-EGFP and H1.1-EGFP. Thus, the dipole of the EGFP tag should ideally reflect the positional ordering by having a different dipole angle distribution from a randomly oriented sample. The logic of the technique used here is to measure signatures of nonrandom angle distribution from a small volume by varying the excitation polarization angles in steps from 0° to 180° (Fig. S3 a) and measuring the fluorescence response at each angle (Fig. 3 a). Experiments on model systems as well as numerical calculations as outlined in the Supplementary Material demonstrate that whereas a random sample or a sample with a unique dipole orientation responds monotonically to the polarization modulation (19
), a sample with semiordered dipole orientations shows nonmonotonic behavior where certain dipole orientations are more favored, resulting in enhanced fluorescence for specific excitation polarization angles. The amplitude of these fluorescence peaks, therefore, are a measure of the number of ordered dipoles. Normalizing with the net intensity yields an approximate ratio of ordered dipoles to random ones. The normalized peak heights averaged over
100 scans are plotted for each cell type for any comparison. Measuring similar responses from live cell nuclei involved repetitions over different regions of a given cell nucleus as well as on nuclei of different cells. Fig. 3 b shows the mean height of fluorescence peaks for H2B-EGFP, H1.1-EGFP, and free EGFP in normal cells, ATP-depleted cells and apoptotic cells plotted as a bar graph where the error bars correspond to the standard deviation showing cell-to-cell variability of the mean peak height over various trials. It is observed that in normal cells, the core histones show the highest mean peak height (Fig. 3 b) reflective of maximal long-range ordering of these particles. The linker histones, however, show less ordering again in line with their dynamic association with chromatin. In ATP-depleted cells, H2B-EGFP shows a large change in peak height confirming the role of active processes in the maintenance of the orientational ordering. On the other hand, H1.1-EGFP shows a lesser change in peak height in ATP-depleted cells indicating that it is less sensitive to changes in long-range ordering than H2B-EGFP. Upon induction of apoptosis, H2B-EGFP cells show both regions of high and low order. However, the mean peak height is relatively reduced (Fig. 3 b), while increasing the statistically significant standard deviation. H1.1-EGFP (Fig. 3 b), in contrast, shows negligible alteration in the positional ordering whereas free EGFP still showed low long-range ordering. The EGFP data show that measurements are sensitive to the interaction of the chromatin with the probes (H1.1-EGFP, H2B-EGFP). Core histones interact maximally with the DNA in chromatin and hence reflect the chromatin positional ordering with the greatest fidelity, thereby being sensitive to reagents that perturb chromatin structure. Given that the chromatin exhibits spatial heterogeneity in its packing as evidenced by steady-state anisotropy measurements next, the temporal aspect of chromatin reorganization was explored. In particular the compaction states achieved by the nucleus have been mapped at different time points of its cell cycle.
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| CONCLUSIONS |
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| SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL |
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Submitted on December 13, 2005; accepted for publication May 10, 2006.
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