Ultrastructural detection of nucleic acids within heat shock-induced perichromatin granules of HeLa cells by cytochemical and immunocytological methods

The perichromatin granules (PGs) are enigmatic structures of the cell nucleus. The major drawbacks for a biological study are their rare occurrence and their small size in normal conditions.As heat shock has been shown to increase their number, we applied a hyperthermal shock on HeLa cells to investigate the nucleic acid content of PGs by means of cytochemical and immunocytological approaches. These heat shock-induced PGs (hsiPGs) appeared as clusters organized in the form of honeycomb structures and were always associated with some blocks of condensed chromatin, such as the perinucleolar chromatin shell. A stalk connecting the hsiPG to the chromatin could be observed.For the detection of RNA, we applied an immunocytological method involving two anti-RNA antibodies and quantified the gold labelling obtained. The results clearly revealed that hsiPGs contained RNA.Regarding to the detection of DNA, we used three different methods followed by quantitative analyses. The results seemed to indicate that a small amount of DNA was present in hsiPGs.Together, these findings suggest that hsiPGs might be RNP structures associated with particular regions of DNA.