New Techniques in the Study of Human Chromosomes: Methods and Applications

Abstract

In 1968, Caspersson et al ¹⁰ demonstrated that the fluorescence of chromosomes after quinacrine mustard staining revealed a typical pattern of bands for each element. The importance of this breakthrough was apparently not grasped immediately by cytogeneticists. It was only when Caspersson et al.^17,18 demonstrated that each human chromosome could be identified by this technique that banding patterns were studied the world over. A labeling of the pericentromeric regions was achieved by many authors.^2,60,82 Very soon other methods derived from these findings were described by Sumner et al.,¹⁰¹ Drets and Shaw,²⁷ and Schnedl.⁹⁶ Before these developments, the controlled denaturation of chromosomes by heat was described by Dutrillaux and Lejeune,⁴¹ using a procedure derived from the experiments of Yunis et al ¹⁰⁷ In mid-1971, another technique, proteolytic digestion, was discovered by Dutrillaux et al ³⁶ and numerous modifications were then reported.^47,97,105 Finally, modification of the pH of the Giemsa stain solution was described by Patil et al,⁸⁴ and, in a very different way, Zakharov et al ¹⁰⁸ demonstrated that treatment of living cells with 5-bromodeoxyuridine (BUdR) could reveal a specific pattern of localized uncoiling.