GSE61814
Spatial genome organization: contrasting views from chromosome conformation capture and fluorescence in situ hybridization
Though important for gene regulation most studies of genome organisation use either fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH) or chromosome conformation capture (3C) methods. FISH directly visualises the spatial relationship of sequences, but is usually applied to a few loci at a time. The frequency at which sequences are ligated together by formaldehyde crosslinking can be measured genome-wide by 3C methods, with higher frequencies thought to reflect shorter distances. FISH and 3C should therefore give the same views of genome organisation, but this has not been tested extensively.  We investigate the murine HoxD locus with 5C and FISH in different developmental and activity states, and in the presence or absence of epigenetic regulators. We identify situations where the two datasets are concordant, but find other conditions where chromatin topographies extrapolated from 5C or FISH data are not compatible. We conclude that products captured by 3C do not always reflect spatial proximity, with ligation occurring between sequences located hundreds of nanometers apart – influenced by nuclear environment and chromatin composition. We conclude that results obtained at high-resolution with either 3C methods or by FISH alone must be interpreted with caution and that conclusions about genome organisation should be validated by independent methods. Overall design: 5C oligonucleotides were designed around EcoRI restriction sites following an alternative scheme