Correlative light and soft X-ray tomography of in situ mesoscale heterochromatin structure in intact cells.

ABSTRACT: Heterochromatin organization is critical to many genome-related programs including transcriptional silencing and DNA repair. While super-resolution imaging, electron microscopy, and multiomics methods have provided indirect insights into the heterochromatin organization, a direct measurement of mesoscale heterochromatin ultrastructure is still missing. We use a combination of correlative light microscopy and cryo-soft X-ray tomography (CLXT) to analyze heterochromatin organization in the intact hydrated state of human mammary fibroblast cells. Our analysis reveals that the heterochromatin ultra-structure has a typical mean domain size of approximately 80 nm and a mean separation of approximately 120 nm between domains. Functional perturbations yield further insights into the molecular dens

SUBMITTER: Gupta R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11557596 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature