DMS footprinting - Dimethyl sulphate (DMS) is one of the oldest and most versatile chemical reagents used to probe RNA structure. - It was introduced for RNA structure mapping in 1980. This early method allowed detection of methylation by DMS at N 7 of guanosine and N 3 of cytidine nucleotide because of modification facilitate cleavage of the chain. - The sites of the methylation were determined by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) analysis of end-labelled RNA. - Analogous method was used to footprint the binding of protein to DNA. - DMS footprinting is performed by binding the protein to its end labelled DNA target then attacking the DNA protein complex with DMS. - DMS footprinting follows a similar principle as fingerprinting except that the DNA methylation agent DMS, instead of DNase. - DMS foot printing which starts in the same ways as DNase foo