Workman and Langmore have recently proposed a procedure for isolating particular chromatin fragments. The method requires restriction endonuclease cutting of the chromatin and a probe, their digestion with two exonucleases which leave complimentary single strand termini and low temperature hybridization of these. We here report simple electron microscopic monitoring of the four reactions involved.Our test material was ϕX-174 RF DNA which is cut once by restriction endonuclease Xho I. The conversion of circles to linear molecules was followed in Kleinschmidt spreads. Plate I shows a circular and a linear DNA molecule. The rate of cutting is shown in Figure 1.After completion of the endonuclease cutting, one portion of the DNA was treated with exonuclease III, an enzyme known to digest the 3' terminals of double helical DNA. Aliquots when examined in the electron microscope reveal a decreasing length of double helix and increasing bushes at the ends.
