Epigenetic characterization of the early embryo with a chromatin immunoprecipitation protocol applicable to small cell populations.

Peter Scambler

Peter Scambler

Peter Scambler

+ -1 Evaluators

This paper is noteworthy as it describes carrier chromatin immunoprecipitation (CChIP), a modification of ChIP allowing investigation of samples containing as few as 1,000 cells with little degradation of information content, and the useful analysis of 100 cells. This technique opens up ChIP to a gamut of situations where low cell numbers are available, for example during early embryogenesis, following flow sorts of specific cell lineages, fine needle aspiration or other biopsy procedures.

Michael Meisterernst

Michael Meisterernst

Michael Meisterernst

+ -1 Evaluators

Turner and colleagues describe a new method termed CChIP that utilizes Drosophila chromatin as carrier together with a specific sample, which ultimately makes it possible to characterize the genomic location of DNA bound factors from very few (100-1000) cells in mammalian tissues. Chromatin IP (ChIP) is the most commonly used method to characterize the protein factors bound to chromosomal DNA. The method can be applied to virtually any cell and protein as long as antibodies against the specific factor of choice and a sufficient number of homogenous cells are available. However, standard ChIP protocols use 500,000 or more cells, thereby limiting the application range. If it proves to be robust, CChIP has the potential to substantially broaden the applications of ChIP as a technique, for example, in developmental biology and in the diagnosis of human diseases.

Miles Wilkinson

Miles Wilkinson

Miles Wilkinson

+ -1 Evaluators

O'Neill et al. report a modification of the chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) method, allowing it to be used with only 100-1000 cells. The key modification is inclusion of Drosophila melanogaster chromatin as a carrier. This carrier ChIP (CChIP) method has the potential to address many questions that could not be answered using the standard ChIP method.