Reverse ChIP:研究DNA-蛋白质相互作用的新方法

反向染色质免疫共沉淀技术(reverse chromatin immunoprecipitation assay,Reverse ChIP)是一种在体内状态下分析DNA-蛋白质相互作用的新方法.它用特异的核酸探针捕获靶DNA片段及与其相结合的蛋白质,蛋白质用质谱仪检测,以达到确定靶DNA位点全部相关蛋白质的目的.其可对靶DNA位点相关蛋白质进行全面、系统地鉴定,特别是寻找已知DNA元件相应的调节蛋白.在发现、鉴定靶DNA位点相关蛋白质和研究DNA-蛋白质相互作用中有重要应用价值.     

Fast chromatin immunoprecipitation assay

Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) is a widely used method to explore in vivo interactions between proteins and DNA. The ChIP assay takes several days to complete, involves several tube transfers and uses either phenol–chlorophorm or spin columns to purify DNA. The traditional ChIP method becomes a challenge when handling multiple samples. We have developed an efficient and rapid Chelex resin-based ChIP procedure that dramatically reduces time of the assay and uses only a single tube to isolate PCR-ready DNA. This method greatly facilitates the probing of chromatin changes over many time points with several antibodies in one experiment.     

An efficient chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) protocol for studying histone modifications in Arabidopsis plants

Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) is a powerful tool for the characterization of covalent histone modifications and DNA-histone interactions in vivo. The procedure includes DNA-histone cross-linking in chromatin, shearing DNA into smaller fragments, immunoprecipitation with antibodies against the histone modifications of interest, followed by PCR identification of associated DNA sequences. In this protocol, we describe a simplified and optimized version of ChIP assay by reducing the number of experimental steps and isolation solutions and shortening preparation times. We include a nuclear isolation step before chromatin shearing, which provides a good yield of high-quality DNA resulting in at least 15 mug of DNA from each immunoprecipitated sample (from 0.2 to 0.4 g of starting tissue material) sufficient to test > or =25 genes of interest. This simpler and cost-efficient protocol has been applied for histone-modification studies of various Arabidopsis thaliana tissues and is easy to adapt for other systems as well.     

Analysis of epigenetic modifications of chromatin at specific gene loci by native chromatin immunoprecipitation of nucleosomes isolated using hydroxyapatite chromatography

Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) is routinely used to examine epigenetic modification of histones at specific genomic locations. However, covalent modifications of histone tails can serve as docking sites for chromatin regulatory factors. As such, association of these regulatory factors with chromatin could cause steric hindrance for antibody recognition, resulting in an underestimation of the relative enrichment of a given histone modification at specific loci. To overcome this problem, we have developed a native ChIP protocol to study covalent modification of histones that takes advantage of hydroxyapatite (HAP) chromatography to wash away chromatin-associated proteins before the immunoprecipitation of nucleosomes. This fast and simple procedure consists of five steps: nuclei isolation from cultured cells; fragmentation of chromatin using MNase; purification of nucleosomes using HAP; immunoprecipitation of modified nucleosomes; and qPCR analysis of DNA associated with modified histones. Nucleosomes prepared in this manner are free of contaminating proteins and permit an accurate evaluation of relative abundance of different covalent histone modifications at specific genomic loci. Completion of this protocol requires approximately 1.5 d.     

染色质免疫沉淀技术在研究DNA与蛋白质相互作用中的应用

在后基因组时代,DNA-蛋白质的相互作用是研究基因表达调控的一个重要领域。与其他方法相比,染色质免疫沉淀技术（chromatin immunoprecipitation assay, ChIP）是一种在体内研究DNA-蛋白质相互作用的理想的方法。近年来这种方法与DNA芯片和分子克隆技术相结合,可用于高通量的筛选已知蛋白因子的未知DNA靶点和研究反式作用因子在整个基因组上的分布情况,这将有助于深入理解DNA-蛋白质相互作用的调控网络。总结了染色质免疫沉淀技术的方法,特别介绍了使用这些方法取得的最新进展。     

运用染色质免疫沉淀技术筛选出AP-2α的靶基因GALK1

在后基因组时代,DNA-蛋白质的相互作用是研究基因表达调控的一个重要领域.与其他方法相比,染色质免疫沉淀技术 (chromatin immunoprecipitation assay, ChIP ) 是一种近来研究体内 DNA 与蛋白质相互作用的最好方法之一.本研究利用 ChIP 克隆方法, 找出了 AP-2α所调控的新的下游靶基因 GALK1,并应用 Luciferase assay和 RT-PCR 实验进行了初步的验证.这一新发现,有利于我们进一步研究转录因子AP-2α的功能.     

Comparison of sample preparation methods for ChIP-chip assays

A single chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) sample does not provide enough DNA for hybridization to a genomic tiling array. A commonly used technique for amplifying the DNA obtained from ChIP assays is ligation-mediated PCR (LM-PCR). However; using this amplification method, we could not identify Oct4 binding sites on genomic tiling arrays representing 1% of the human genome (ENCODE arrays). In contrast, hybridization of a pool of 10 ChIP samples to the arrays produced reproducible binding patterns and low background signals. However the pooling method would greatly increase the number of ChIP reactions needed to analyze the entire human genome. Therefore, we have adapted the GenomePlex whole genome amplification (WGA) method for use in ChIP-chip assays; detailed ChIP and amplification protocols used for these analyses are provided as supplementary material. When applied to ENCODE arrays, the products prepared using this new method resulted in an Oct4 binding pattern similar to that from the pooled Oct4 ChIP samples. Importantly, the signal-to-noise ratio using the GenomePlex WGA method is superior to the LM-PCR amplification method.     

Alpha 1抗胰蛋白酶核基质附着区增强RNA聚合酶Ⅱ依赖的转录

核基质附着区是一种真核生物的DNA元件,能调控染色体结构和活性。为研究体内MAR相关的染色质准入和转录调控,我们从人基因组中克隆了Alpha 1抗胰蛋白酶核基质附着区（α1-AT MAR）并将其连入pEGFP-C1载体。分别以空载体和携带MAR的载体通过脂质体法转染人胚肾293细胞系。经G418筛选20天的细胞池用作实验分析。半定量RT-PCR及荧光显微镜观察显示此MAR能够增强临近基因的表达。进一步用染色质免疫共沉淀（ChIP）共定位CMV启动子和RNA聚合酶Ⅱ（RNAPⅡ）,PCR结果显示存在MAR元件时,更多的RNA聚合酶Ⅱ被富集到启动子区。ChIP方法可用于证实MAR介导的转录激活,在实时检测方面比RT-PCR提供了更多动力学信息。这项技术为我们进一步研究基因表达调控提供了技术平台。