Transcription renders chromatin resistant to micrococcal nuclease digestion

When isolated HeLa cell nuclei were preincubated under transcription conditions with excess E. coli RNA polymerase, chromatin DNA became relatively resistant to digestion by micrococcal nuclease. Quantitation of the DNA content in nuclei after enzyme digestion revealed that approximately twice as much nuclease was required to give the same levels of release of DNA fragments from transcribed as from untranscribed nuclei. Resistance increased with the amount of polymerase and with the time of preincubation. Since the resistance to nuclease was not observed in the presence of rifampicin or by preincubation without UTP, both RNA chain initiation and elongation were considered to be essential for the manifestation of resistance. However, when DNase 1 was used as a probe, such a change in chromatin DNA was not detected.