Chemical Interference

**Semantic type:** Molecular Biology Research Technique

**Definition:** A type of footprinting technique used to define the location of protein-nucleic acid contacts at the base pair level in nucleic acids. It utilizes nucleic acids treated with a chemical in such a way that only a fraction of the nucleotides are chemically modified. The chemically modified nucleotides that interfere with protein-nucleic acid complex formation can be identified by fragmentation and electrophoretic analysis of the DNA isolated from the complexes.