Effects of neocarzinostatin on mammalian nuclei: release of nucleosomes

When Chinese hamster cell nuclei (Line CHO) were reacted with neocarzinostatin and its DNA was analyzed on non-denaturing agarose gel electrophoresis, a series of bands with a multiplicity of 175 base pairs was obtained. A similar result was also obtained when the DNA samples were electrophoresed under denaturing gels. Our results suggest that the linker DNA between nucleosomes is the susceptible site to the drug and that neocarzinostatin can be used to study the chromatin structure.