Polarization-sensitive two-photon microscopy study of the organization of liquid-crystalline DNA

Highly concentrated DNA solutions exhibit self-ordering properties such as the generation of liquid-crystalline phases. Such organized domains may play an important role in the global chromatin topology but can also be used as a simple model for the study of more complex 3D DNA structures. In this work, using polarized two-photon fluorescence microscopy, we report on the orientation of DNA molecules in liquid-crystalline phases. For this purpose, we analyze the signal emitted by fluorophores that are noncovalently bound to DNA strands. In nonlinear processes, excitation occurs exclusively in the focal volume, which offers advantages such as the reduction of photobleaching of out-of-focus molecules and intrinsic 3D sectioning capability. Propidium iodide and Hoechst, two fluorophores with different DNA binding modes, have been considered. Polarimetric measurements show that the dyes follow the alignment with respect to the DNA strands and allow the determination of the angles between the emission dipoles and the longitudinal axis of the DNA double strand. These results provide a useful starting point toward the application of two-photon polarimetry techniques to determine the local orientation of condensed DNA in physiological conditions.