GSE18481
Double fragmentation ChIP-seq provides single nucleotide resolution Tcf4 binding characteristics
ChIP-seq has become the method of choice for studying functional DNA-protein interactions on a genome wide scale. The method is based on co-immunoprecipitation of DNA binding proteins with formaldehyde cross-linked DNA, followed by deep sequencing of immunoprecipitated chromatin fragments, allowing for the identification of binding sites with high accuracy [1-5]. Traditionally, genome-wide tiling path microarrays were used for the detection of specifically immunoprecipitated DNA fragments, but current next-generation sequencers now generate sufficient data to assay multiple samples in a single sequencing run, making this method more time and cost effective compared to microarray-based approaches [2]. However, due to limitations in read length of next generation sequencing technologies (50-76bp), it is not possible to sequence the complete length of immunoprecipitated DNA fragments which can be up to 2kb long reflecting biology in case of big protein complexes. As a consequence only the ends of the immunoprecipitated DNA fragments are sequenced. Deconvolution of sequencing reads mapping to the positive and negative strand is required to identify the real DNA binding site [4-9]. This limitation is most obvious in case of large complex regions where multiple binding sites of various regulatory elements are clustered close to each other. Deconvolution of such regions and the exact identification of individual binding positions is very challenging [4]. Similar problems can occur when studying histone positioning in cases where the length of ChIP fragments is bigger than the average distance of 2 neighboring nucleosomes. In addition frequently only narrow size range of immunoprecipitated fragments is selected for sequencing and thus possible bias towards binding regions within the selected range can be expected by loosing larger fragments possible originated from protein complexes interacting with DNA. To circumvent these complications, we modified the procedure for the preparation of ChIP-seq samples by introducing an additional extensive fragmentation round after isolation of immunoprecipitated chromatin to generate 70-110 bp long DNA fragments. For testing, we choose Tcf4 protein which is a well-studied downstream element of the Wnt-pathway for which the genome wide binding site profile is known was already known from ChIP-on-CHIP experiments [10]. Using the modified approach, we were able to identify Tcf4 binding sites at near nucleotide resolution without computational deconvolution. Furthermore, high-resolution information on genome-wide binding site regions allowed for the identification of potential novel Tcf4 co-factors as well as target genes. Overall design: 5 samples + 3 input samples