Three-dimensional acrylamide fluorescence in situ hybridization for plant cells.

Plant meiosis involves complex and dynamic processes that occur within the space inside the nucleus. Direct inspection of meiotic chromosomes by fl uorescence microscopy has been used to investigate many of these processes. In particular, optical sectioning microscopy of fl uorescence in situ hybridization (FISH)-stained nuclei provides three-dimensional spatial information about the organization and distribution of speci fi c sequences and chromosomal loci within the nucleus. Here we provide a fully detailed three-dimensional (3D) acrylamide FISH method for the analysis of plant meiotic nuclei. Several examples illustrate the versatility of this technique for the investigation of meiotic telomere dynamics in maize, Arabidopsis , and oat. Additional examples of 3D FISH include chromosome painting in a maize chromosome-addition line of oat and telomere FISH with maize nuclei from plants expressing a fl uorescently tagged fusion protein, histone H2B-mCherry.