Recent innovations have advanced our understanding of how the 3D organization of chromosomes regulates nuclear processes such as transcription. However, further technological innovations are needed to visualize the fine structure of chromatin in cells.

The authors developed Decode-PAINT, a chromatin imaging method based on fluorescence in situ DNA hybridization (FISH) and super resolution microscopy. Decode-PAINT enables high-throughput visualization of multiple genomic loci at a resolution close to the nucleosome scale. They used Decode-PAINT to characterize and compare the nanostructures of active and inactive human X chromosomes.

By providing a new pipeline that utilizes standard lab equipment, this study makes in situ single-cell structural genomics more accessible and may pave the way for sophisticated spatial multi-omics studies.

This preprint has been assigned the following badges: Open Software, New Methods.

Read the preprint on bioRxiv (Sasaki et al., 2022): https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.08.01.502089.