Figure 5

Disaggregation of chromosome territories in objects. (a,b) mean number of objects at increasing thresholds for chicken chromosome 1 (a) and chromosome 8 (b) territories. When the starting threshold of 20 is gradually increased, the nuclear background produces at first few and then many objects (around threshold 40). Suppression of nuclear background occurs at thresholds between 60–70, leaving chromosome territories only. The range above these thresholds is thus the most interesting since it is here where the territories start to break up in several objects (compare Fig. 2). These objects are gradually lost at further increasing thresholds. Values for macrophages are not directly comparable to other cell types since they contain additional chromosomes (see Methods). (c, d) Chromatin content per surface. Signal intensity of objects was divided by object surface area and averaged (see Methods for details). Since additional chromosomal parts add intensity as well as surface, this parameter is unsusceptible to aneuploidy.