Dual agarose magnetic (DAM) ChIP

BACKGROUND: Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) has become a very popular technique to study epigenetic regulation because it can be used to identify proteins and protein modifications present at specific locations in chromatin. While techniques have been developed to investigate epigenetic modifications present in chromatin during a specific biological function such as transcription, they depend upon the ability of the ChIP to analyze two epitopes on the same chromatin and are generally time consuming, difficult to perform, and not very sensitive. The Dual Agarose Magnetic (DAM) ChIP procedure described here is designed to address these shortcomings. FINDINGS: Protein A agarose and protein G magnetic beads bound with different IgGs have been combined in a single Chromatin Immunoprecipitation (ChIP) assay to analyze for the presence of two epitopes on the same chromatin at the same time. This procedure has been used with non-immune rabbit IgG bound to either the agarose or beads in order to include an internal negative control for non-specific binding of chromatin. The procedure has also been used with various antibodies including those targeting RNA Polymerase II and replication protein A 70 to determine whether specific forms of modified histones are present in either transcribing or replicating forms of SV40 minichromosomes respectively. CONCLUSIONS: The DAM ChIP procedure is a rapid, simple, and sensitive technique to characterize two epitopes located in the same chromatin. It should be particularly useful for the rapid screening of epigenetic modifications present in biologically active chromatin.