Distinct nuclear orientation patterns for mouse chromosome 11 in normal B lymphocytes

BACKGROUND: Characterizing the nuclear orientation of chromosomes in the three-dimensional (3D) nucleus by multicolor banding (mBANDing) is a new approach towards understanding nuclear organization of chromosome territories. An mBANDing paint is composed of multiple overlapping subchromosomal probes that represent different regions of a single chromosome. In this study, we used it for the analysis of chromosome orientation in 3D interphase nuclei. We determined whether the nuclear orientation of the two chromosome 11 homologs was random or preferential, and if it was conserved between diploid mouse Pre B lymphocytes of BALB/c origin and primary B lymphocytes of congenic [T38HxBALB/c]N wild-type mice. The chromosome orientation was assessed visually and through a semi-automated quantitative analysis of the radial and angular orientation patterns observed in both B cell types. RESULTS: Our data indicate that there are different preferential patterns of chromosome 11 orientation, which are not significantly different between both mouse cell types (p > 0.05). In the most common case for both cell types, both copies of chromosome 11 were oriented in parallel with the nuclear border. The second most common pattern in both types of B lymphocytes was with one homolog of chromosome 11 positioned with its telomeric end towards the nuclear center and with its centromeric end towards the periphery, while the other chromosome 11 was found parallel with the nuclear border. In addition to these two most common orientations present in approximately 50% of nuclei from each cell type, other orientations were observed at lower frequencies. CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that there are probabilistic, non-random orientation patterns for mouse chromosome 11 in the mouse B lymphocytes we investigated (p < 0.0001).