Project description:Chromatin mapping using micrococcal nuclease (MNase) has been the standard tool for mapping nucleosomes for >40 years. When coupled with DNA sequencing, MNase-seq can provide base-pair-resolution nucleosome maps. However, determining nucleosome occupancy using MNase-seq has been hampered by its aggressive endo-/exo-nuclease activities, whereby cleavages within linker regions produce oligo- and mono-nucleosomes whereas cleavages within nucleosomes destroy them. Here we introduce a theoretical framework for predicting nucleosome occupancies and an experimental protocol with appropriate spike-in normalization that confirms our theory and provides accurate occupancy levels over an MNase digestion time-course. As expected, DNaseI hypersensitive sites and transcription units are digested by MNase at elevated rates, and the apparent deficiency of nucleosomes at 3’ ends of Drosophila genes is an artifact of MNase preference for AT-rich DNA. Surprisingly, we observed no overall differences between Drosophila euchromatin and heterochromatin, which implies that heterochromatin compaction does not render nucleosomal DNA less accessible than euchromatin.
Project description:Open chromatin provides access to a wide spectrum of DNA binding proteins for DNA metabolism processes such as transcription, repair, recombination, and replication. In this regard, open chromatin profiling has been widely used to identify the location of regulatory regions, including promoters, enhancers, insulators, silencers, replication origins, and recombination hotspots. Regulatory DNA elements are made accessible by nucleosome-depeleted states. Thus, nucleosome remodelling and modification should be intimately coupled with open chromatin formation and regulation. However, our knowledge of nucleosome regulation is largely limited to promoter regions, which comprise only a subset of all regulatory loci in the genome. In order to examine nucleosome patterns in open chromatin regions, we performed micrococcal nuclease (MNase) sequencing for a laboratory strain of yeast. Nucleosome occupancy profiled by Micrococcal nuclease (MNase) digestion
Project description:Chromatin accessibility plays a fundamental role in gene regulation. One mechanism to regulate accessibility is nucleosome placement, which is often measured by quantifying protection of DNA from enzymatic digestion. We introduce a metric that uses micrococcal nuclease (MNase) digestion in a novel manner to measure chromatin accessibility by combining information from several digests of increasing depths. This metric, MACC, quantifies the inherent heterogeneity of nucleosome accessibility in which some nucleosomes are seen preferentially at high MNase and some at low MNase. MACC interrogates each genomic locus, measuring both location of nucleosomes and accessibility to MNase in the same assay. MACC can be performed either with or without a histone immunoprecipitation step, and thereby compares behavior of nucleosomes to that of non-histone proteins. We find that enhancers, promoters and other regulatory regions have changes in accessibility that do not correlate with changes in nucleosome occupancy. Moreover, we show that high nucleosome occupancy does not necessarily preclude high accessibility, revealing novel principles of chromatin regulation.
Project description:MNase-seq was performed in order to analyze changes in nucleosomal occupancy after depletion of CTCF/P190 and ISWI from Drosophila S2 cells MNase-seq from Drosophila S2 nuclei after CTCF/CP190 or ISWI-specific RNAi treatment
Project description:Mapping of nucleosomes, the basic DNA packaging unit in eukaryotes, is fundamental for understanding genome regulation as nucleosomes modulate DNA access by their positioning along the genome. A cell population nucleosome map requires two observables: nucleosome positions along the DNA (“Where?”) and nucleosome occupancies across the population (“In how many cells?”). All available genome-wide nucleosome mapping techniques are yield methods as they score either nucleosomal (e.g., MNase-seq, chemical cleavage-seq) or non-nucleosomal (e.g., ATAC-seq) DNA but lose track of the total DNA population for each genomic region. Therefore, they only provide nucleosome positions and maybe compare relative occupancies between positions but cannot measure absolute nucleosome occupancy, which is the fraction of all DNA molecules occupied at a given position and time by a nucleosome. Here, we established two orthogonal and thereby crossvalidating approaches to measure absolute nucleosome occupancy across the Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome via restriction enzymes and DNA methyltransferases. The resulting high-resolution (9 bp) map shows uniform absolute occupancies. Most nucleosome positions are occupied in most cells: 97% of all nucleosomes called by chemical cleavage-seq have a mean absolute occupancy of 90 ± 6% (± SD). Depending on nucleosome position calling procedures, there are 57-60,000 nucleosomes per yeast cell. The few low absolute occupancy nucleosomes do not correlate with highly transcribed gene bodies, but with increased presence of the nucleosome-evicting RSC chromatin remodeling complex there and are enriched upstream of highly transcribed or regulated genes. Our work provides a quantitative method and reference frame in absolute terms for future chromatin studies.
Project description:Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced-pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) self-renew and differentiate into an array of cell types in vitro and in vivo. A complex network of genetic and epigenetic pathways regulates the self-renewal and differentiation of these pluripotent cells, and the structure and covalent modifications of chromatin play a prominent role in this process. We examine nucleosome occupancy in mouse and human embryonic stem cells (ESCs), induced-pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), and differentiated cell types using MNase-seq. To address variability inherent in this technique, we developed a bioinformatic approach that enabled the identification of regions of difference (RoD) in nucleosome occupancy between pluripotent and somatic cells. The majority of changes in nucleosomal signatures that occur in differentiation are reset during reprogramming. We conclude that changes in nucleosome occupancy are a hallmark of pluripotency and likely identify key regulatory regions that play a role in determining cell identity. Micrococcal nuclease digestion of chromatin in crosslinked cells was followed by high throughput sequencing. These experiments were carried out in four mouse cell types: embryonic stem cells, induced pluripotent stem cells, somatic tail-tip fibroblasts and liver, and three human cell types: H1-OGN embryonic stem cells, H1-OGN induced pluripotent stem cells, and fibroblasts differentiated from H1-OGN ESCs. At least two replicates performed with each cell type were sequenced.
Project description:Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and induced-pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) self-renew and differentiate into an array of cell types in vitro and in vivo. A complex network of genetic and epigenetic pathways regulates the self-renewal and differentiation of these pluripotent cells, and the structure and covalent modifications of chromatin play a prominent role in this process. We examine nucleosome occupancy in mouse and human embryonic stem cells (ESCs), induced-pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), and differentiated cell types using MNase-seq. To address variability inherent in this technique, we developed a bioinformatic approach that enabled the identification of regions of difference (RoD) in nucleosome occupancy between pluripotent and somatic cells. The majority of changes in nucleosomal signatures that occur in differentiation are reset during reprogramming. We conclude that changes in nucleosome occupancy are a hallmark of pluripotency and likely identify key regulatory regions that play a role in determining cell identity.
Project description:Chromatin structure affects gene splicing and nucleosome as the basic packaged unit is associated with exon recognition. But little is known about the function of nucleosome occupancy in the process of exon origination. Here we performed MNase-seq to obtain genome-wide nucleosome profiles for several tissues of human, rhesus monkey, tree shrew, mouse and pig. At the first time we found conserved nucleosome profile for different tissues. By combining RNA-seq data of each species, we traced the nucleosome occupancy changes of human new exons. Surprisingly, we found nucleosomes were higher occupied before exon formation. And this pre-occupancy contributed to the formation of exon-intron GC difference and maintain splice site strength. Thus we proposed a preadaption model for the function of nucleosome occupancy in human exons origination.
Project description:Aging is accompanied by physiological impairments, which, in insulin-responsive tissues, including the liver, predispose individuals to metabolic disease. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying these changes remain largely unknown. Here, we analyze genome-wide profiles of RNA and chromatin organization in the liver of young (3 months) and old (21 months) mice. Transcriptional changes suggest that de-repression of the nuclear receptors PPARM-NM-1, PPARM-NM-3, and LXRM-NM-1 in aged mouse liver leads to activation of targets regulating lipid synthesis and storage, whereas age-dependent changes in nucleosome occupancy are associated with binding sites for both known regulators (forkhead factors and nuclear receptors) and for novel candidates associated with nuclear lamina (Hdac3 and Srf) implicated to govern metabolic function of aging liver. Winged-helix factor Foxa2 and nuclear receptor co-repressor Hdac3 exhibit reciprocal binding pattern at PPARM-NM-1 targets contributing to gene expression changes that lead to steatosis in aged liver. Genome-wide nucleosome profiles (MNase-Seq) from young (3 months) and old (21 months) mouse livers