Genome Biology

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Fast genomic μChIP-chip from 1,000 cells

John Arne Dahl, Andrew H Reiner and Philippe Collas*

Author Affiliations

Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Medicine, University of Oslo, 0317 Oslo, Norway

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Genome Biology 2009, 10:R13 doi:10.1186/gb-2009-10-2-r13

Published: 10 February 2009

Abstract

Genome-wide location analysis of histone modifications and transcription factor binding relies on chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assays. These assays are, however, time-consuming and require large numbers of cells, hindering their application to the analysis of many interesting cell types. We report here a fast microChIP (μChIP) assay for 1,000 cells in combination with microarrays to produce genome-scale surveys of histone modifications. μChIP-chip reliably reproduces data obtained by large-scale assays: H3K9ac and H3K9m3 enrichment profiles are conserved and nucleosome-free regions are revealed.