Euchromatin resembles a set of beads on a string at large magnifications. From farther away, it can resemble a ball of tangled thread, such as in some electron microscope visualizations. In both optical and electron microscopic visualizations, euchromatin appears lighter in color than heterochromatin - which is also present in the nucleus and appears darkly - due to its less compact structure. When visualizing chromosomes, such as in a karyogram, cytogenetic banding is used to stain the chromosomes. Cytogenetic banding allows us to see which parts of the chromosome are made up of euchromatin or heterochromatin in order to differentiate chromosomal subsections, irregularities or rearrangements. One such example is G banding, otherwise known as Giemsa staining where euchromatin appears lighter than heterochromatin.
Appearance of Heterochromatin and Euchromatin Under Various Visualization TechniquesIt is thought that the cell uses transformation from euchromatin into heterochromatin as a method of controlling gene expression and replication, since such processes behave differently on densely compacted chromatin. This is known as the 'accessibility hypothesis'. One example of constitutive euchromatin that is 'always turned on' is housekeeping genes, which code for the proteins needed for basic functions of cell survival.
Another method of regulation that incorporates a negative charge, thereby favoring the "open" form, is ADP ribosylation. This process adds one or more ADP-ribose units to the histone, and is involved in the DNA damage response pathway.
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