Good Cell line for Histone 3 and 4 - Positive Control for Basic Staining and WBs (Jun/19/2010 )

I'm totally NEW to histones. I am actually doing a favor for someone and testing some antibodies. I'm may need to run a Western blot and use either cells from either colon, liver, breast or pancreatic cancer cell lines. In addition, I may use some of these cell lines for basic immunocyto.

I know how to do WBs and ICC, but what I didn't know is if any of these general cell lines would be better than the other for testing some anti histone Abs. Would any type of cells I listed be more rich in histones? Or, more rich in histone modification (acetylation)? I just wouldn't know on the latter question. One of the antibodies looks at a specific acetyl modification as well. So any type of protocol which helps maintain histone modification would be useful too.

Thanks!

It seems you'll be safe with almost any cell line. Trichostatin A treatment is a nice way to modulate lysine acetylation.
Look at some of the anti-histone h3 and anti-histone h4 antibody pages at Cell Signaling:

http://www.cellsignal.com/products/2591.html