Figure 1

A. Crosslinking of H3–H4. Histones H3 and H4 were incubated for the indicated minutes and then crosslinked with formaldehyde before separation on a 15% SDS/PAGE. The blot was probed separately with anti-H3 and anti-H4. B. Effect of Asf1 and TLK1B on H3–H4 dimer and tetramer formation. Reactions containing the indicated combinations of H3, H4, Asf1, and TLK1B (all in equivalent amount) were crosslinked as described in Methods and immunoblotted for H4 or H3. C. Western blots for Asf1 and TLK1B. The indicated reactions as in panel B were run in duplicate lanes and immunoblotted for Asf1, H3, or TLK1B (the gel was run for a longer time than in panel B to separate the larger proteins). For antibody controls, lane 1 contained only Asf1, and lane 7 contained only TLK1B. The positions of the cross-linked complexes identified by mobility and immunoreactivity are indicated. D. TLK1B and Asf1 bind each other stoichiometrically. Reactions contained 5 μg of GST-TLK1B and varying amounts of Asf1, as indicated. After 10 min at room temperature, the samples were adsorbed on GSH-Sepharose and analyzed for bound and unbound fractions after separation on a 10% SDS/PAGE, which was stained with Coomassie blue. E. Interaction of TLK1B and Asf1 and the effect of ATP. GST-TLK1B and Asf1 (1 μg each) were incubated for 10 min at room temperature with and without 10 or 100 μM ATP, before analysis by GSH-Sepharose pull-down. The 10% SDS/PAGE gel was stained with Coomassie blue. F. MNase digestion of pBluescript assembled into pseudo-nucleosomes. In the left panel, naked supercoiled plasmid was digested with MNase for the indicated time. In the right panel, the plasmid was first incubated with equimolar H3 and H4 in high salt and then step-dialyzed as described in [3], before MNase digestion. The DNA was re-extracted from the reactions with Geneclean and run on a 1.5% agarose/TAE gel. The resulting ~120 bp ladder (a bit shorter than the repetitive 146 bp of nucleosomal DNA) is indicative of formation of a chromatinized template. The positions of the bands of a 100-bp ladder (GenRuler, Fermentas) are indicated.