Giemsa banding
Giemsa
staining of acid-denatured chromosomes reveals
characteristic banding patterns that can be used to identify
individual chromosomes. Giemsa is a protein stain: darkly-staining
bands are described as heterochromatic,
and correlate to genetically inactive chromosomal
regions; lightly-staining areas are euchromatic and are
associated with active regions. The G-banding pattern of
human chromosomes links classical cytogenetics to genomics
by assigning sets of genes to particular bands.