Aluminium binding to chromatin DNA as revealed by formation of fluorescent complexes with 8-hydroxyquinoline and other ligands
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 13, 2026

Genome-wide Mapping of Drug-DNA Interactions in Cells with COSMIC (Crosslinking of Small Molecules to Isolate Chromatin)
Published on: January 20, 2016
A R Llorente1, P Del Castillo, J C Stockert
1Departamento de Biología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain.
Abstract:
After aluminium mordanting of chicken blood smears, several chelating dyes and reagents were tested in order to detect the metal binding to chromatin DNA by fluorescence microscopy. 8-Hydroxyquinoline induced the most selective fluorescence reaction, which was abolished after DNase or trichloroacetic acid treatment. Morin, purpurin and nuclear fast red showed an intense nuclear fluorescence, but lower selectivity. Fluorescence was also observed in chromatin treated with morin or curcumin without mordanting. The simplicity and microscopical characteristics of the A1/8-hydroxyquinoline fluorescence reaction make it very suitable for cytological studies of chromatin.
Related Concept Videos
Metal-Ligand Bonds
In these complexes, transition metals form coordinate covalent bonds, a kind of Lewis acid-base interaction in which both of the electrons in the bond are contributed by a donor (Lewis base) to an electron acceptor (Lewis acid). The Lewis acid in...
Euchromatin
Euchromatin is the less dense region of the chromatin and stains lighter. Euchromatin contains histone H3 extensively...
Labeling DNA Probes
Radioisotopes, fluorophores, or small molecule binding partners like biotin or digoxigenin, are the most widely used reporter tags for labeling DNA probes. These labels can be attached to the probe DNA molecule via...
Duplication of Chromatin Structure
The basic unit of the chromatin is the nucleosome, consisting of DNA wrapped around octameric histone proteins and short stretches of linker DNA separating individual nucleosomes. The histone proteins within the nucleosome have their...
Heterochromatin
Constitutive heterochromatin: It is a highly compact region of chromatin that is mostly concentrated in the centromere and telomere. Unlike euchromatin, the amino acid at 9th...

