Osmium Tetroxide Modification and the Study of DNA–Protein Interactions

Osmium tetroxide is an evil-smelling chemical used as a fixative in electron microscopy that can also be used to modify thymidine residues within DNA ( 1 , 2 ). The ability of osmium tetroxide to modify DNA is very sensitive to DNA conformation, In particular, osmium tetroxide will attack thymidines that are unstacked, either because they are in a single-stranded region or, for example, because the DNA is bent or because it is overwound ( 3 ). These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.