6The architectural organization of chromatin can play an important role in genome regulation 7 by affecting the mobility of molecules within its surroundings via binding interactions and 8 molecular crowding. The diffusion of molecules at specific locations in the nucleus can be 9 studied by Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy (FCS), a well-established technique based 10 on the analysis of fluorescence intensity fluctuations detected in a confocal observation 11 volume. However, detecting subtle variations of mobility between different chromatin regions 12 remains challenging with currently-available FCS methods. 13 Here we introduce a method that samples multiple positions by slowly scanning the FCS 14 observation volume across the nucleus. Analyzing the data in short time segments, we 15 preserve the high temporal resolution of single-point FCS while probing different nuclear 16 regions in the same cell. Using the intensity level of the probe (or a DNA marker) as a 17 reference, we efficiently sort the FCS segments into different populations and obtain average 18 correlation functions that are associated to different chromatin regions. This sorting and 19 averaging strategy renders the method statistically robust while preserving the observation of 20 intranuclear variations of mobility.
21Using this approach, we quantified diffusion of monomeric GFP in high versus low 22 chromatin density regions. We found that GFP mobility was reduced in heterochromatin, 23 especially within perinucleolar heterochromatin. Moreover, we found that modulation of 24 chromatin compaction by ATP depletion, or treatment with solution of different osmolarity, 25 differentially-affected the ratio of diffusion in both regions. Then, we used the approach to 26 probe the mobility of estrogen receptor-α (ER) in the vicinity of an integrated multicopy 27 prolactin gene array. Finally, we discussed the coupling of this method with stimulated 28 emission depletion (STED)-FCS, for performing FCS at sub-diffraction spatial scales. 29 30 31 32 33 34 74data at multiple observation volumes (25, 26). Another method that has been used to measure 75 fluctuations at, and between, different points in the nucleus is scanning FCS, which is easily 76 implemented on confocal laser scanning microscopes, but whose temporal resolution is 77 typically limited, by scanning, to the millisecond range (27, 28). Finally, diffusion maps have 78 been recently obtained from the analysis of raster image correlation spectroscopy (RICS) data 79 (29). However, these methods will only provide an accurate description of the mobility 80 properties in different nuclear regions if they are immobile during FCS data acquisition.
81A significant advantage can be gained if the different chromatin regions are identified with 82 the help of a reference marker (30). For instance, the intensity of a fluorescent protein can be 83 used to identify specific sub-nuclear regions or, simply, the intensity of a DNA marker (e.g.
84Hoechst) can be used to identify regions of different ch...