Biology subjects

Skene, P. J.

Publications and source records attributed to Skene, P. J..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2017

CUT&RUN: Targeted in situ genome-wide profiling with high efficiency for low cell numbers

Cleavage Under Targets and Release Using Nuclease (CUT&RUN) is an epigenomic profiling strategy in which antibody-targeted controlled cleavage by micrococcal nuclease releases specific protein-DNA complexes into the supernatant for paired-end DNA sequencing. As only the targeted fragments enter into solution, and the vast majority of DNA is left behind, CUT&RUN has exceptionally low background levels. CUT&RUN outperforms the most widely-used Chromatin Immunoprecipitation (ChIP) protocols in resolution, signal-to-noise, and depth of sequencing required. In contrast to ChIP, CUT&RUN is free of solubility and DNA accessibility artifacts and can be used to profile insoluble chromatin and to detect long-range 3D contacts without cross-linking. Here we present an improved CUT&RUN protocol that does not require isolation of nuclei and provides high-quality data starting with only 100 cells for a histone modification and 1000 cells for a transcription factor. From cells to purified DNA CUT&RUN requires less than a day at the lab bench.

genomics↗

bioRxiv2016

An efficient targeted nuclease strategy for high-resolution mapping of DNA binding sites

We describe Cleavage Under Targets and Release Using Nuclease (CUT&RUN), a chromatin profiling strategy in which antibody-targeted controlled cleavage by micrococcal nuclease releases specific protein-DNA complexes into the supernatant for paired-end DNA sequencing. Unlike Chromatin Immunoprecipitation (ChIP), which fragments and solubilizes total chromatin, CUT&RUN is performed in situ, allowing for both quantitative high-resolution chromatin mapping and probing of the local chromatin environment. When applied to yeast and human nuclei, CUT&RUN yielded precise transcription factor profiles while avoiding cross-linking and solubilization issues. CUT&RUN is simple to perform and is inherently robust, with extremely low backgrounds requiring only ~1/10th the sequencing depth as ChIP, making CUT&RUN especially cost-effective for transcription factor and chromatin profiling. When used in conjunction with native ChIP-seq and applied to human CTCF, CUT&RUN mapped directional long range contacts at high resolution. We conclude that in situ mapping of protein-DNA interactions by CUT&RUN is an attractive alternative to ChIP-seq.

genomics↗

bioRxiv2016

Genome-scale transcriptional regulatory network models for the mouse and human striatum predict roles for SMAD3 and other transcription factors in Huntington’s disease

Transcriptional changes occur presymptomatically and throughout Huntingtons Disease (HD), motivating the study of transcriptional regulatory networks (TRNs) in HD. We reconstructed a genome-scale model for the target genes of 718 TFs in the mouse striatum by integrating a model of the genomic binding sites with transcriptome profiling of striatal tissue from HD mouse models. We identified 48 differentially expressed TF-target gene modules associated with age- and Htt allele-dependent gene expression changes in the mouse striatum, and replicated many of these associations in independent transcriptomic and proteomic datasets. Strikingly, many of these predicted target genes were also differentially expressed in striatal tissue from human disease. We experimentally validated a key model prediction that SMAD3 regulates HD-related gene expression changes using chromatin immunoprecipitation and deep sequencing (ChIP-seq) of mouse striatum. We found Htt allele-dependent changes in the genomic occupancy of SMAD3 and confirmed our models prediction that many SMAD3 target genes are down-regulated early in HD. Importantly, our study provides a mouse and human striatal-specific TRN and prioritizes a hierarchy of transcription factor drivers in HD.

systems biology↗