Interaction between long DNA molecules and activated cisplatin is believed to be crucial to anticancer activity. However, the exact structural changes of long DNA molecules induced by cisplatin are still not very clear. In this study, structural changes of long linear double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) and short single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) induced by activated cisplatin have been investigated by atomic force microscopy (AFM). The results indicated that long DNA molecules gradually formed network structures, beads-on-string structures and their large aggregates. Electrostatic and coordination interactions were considered as the main driving forces producing these novel structures. An interesting finding in this study is the beads-on-string structures. Moreover, it is worth noting that the beads-on-string structures were linked into the networks, which can be ascribed to the strong DNA-DNA interactions. This study expands our knowledge of the interactions between DNA molecules and cisplatin. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.