Silver staining for selective detection of histones in polyacrylamide gels.

A simple silver-staining technique was developed for selective visualization of histones in polyacrylamide gels. The specificity of the stain was confirmed using a variety of protein mixtures and isolated histones. The staining procedure requires a relatively short time to perform (2.5-3 h), and the sensitivity to lysine-rich histones is comparable to that of the conventional Coomassie blue stain (about 0.1 microgram per band). A possible mechanism for the selective staining was deduced from a comparison with the widely used ultrasensitive silver staining.