Summary
Factors influencing a Giemsa banding method in which slides are treated with NaOH and then incubated in phosphate buffer were investigated. The study indicated that the removal of chromosomal proteins during fixation in acetic methanol is important for band formation. When fixatives containing formalin were used no banding occurred. Histones do not appear to be involved in band formation as neither of the two histone staining methods tested gave banding patterns. The age of the slide preparations was important, the best banding occurring on slides a week old. Romanovsky stains were the only stains to give banding, other stains resulted in distorted chromosomes. The composition of the incubation buffer had little effect on the quality of the banding. However liquid scintillation analysis of the phosphate buffer in which 3H-thymidine labelled preparations had been treated, revealed that thymidine is removed during incubation in buffer, and suggests that the degradation of thymidine is an important factor in band formation.
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This work was supported by the W. H. Travis Trust and the Canterbury and Westland Division of the Cancer Society of New Zealand.
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Crossen, P.E. Factors influencing Giemsa band formation of human chromosomes. Histochemie 35, 51–62 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00303664
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00303664