Genome-wide Detection of DNase I Hypersensitive Sites in Single Cells and FFPE Samples

DNase I hypersensitive sites (DHSs) provide important information on the presence of transcriptional regulatory elements and the state of chromatin in mammalian cells(1–3). Conventional DNase-Seq for genome-wide DHSs profiling is limited by the requirement of millions of cells(4,5). Here we report an ultrasensitive strategy, called Pico-Seq, for detection of genome-wide DHSs in single cells. We show that DHS patterns at the single cell level are highly reproducible among individual cells. Among different single cells, highly expressed gene promoters and the enhancers associated with multiple active histone modifications display constitutive DHS while chromatin regions with fewer histone modifications exhibit high variation of DHS. Furthermore, the single-cell DHSs predict enhancers that regulate cell-specific gene expression programs and the cell-to-cell variations of DHS are predictive of gene expression. Finally, we apply Pico-Seq to pools of tumor cells and pools of normal cells, dissected from formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue slides from thyroid cancer patients, and detect thousands of tumor-specific DHSs. Many of these DHSs are associated with promoters and enhancers critically involved in cancer development. Analysis of the DHS sequences uncovers one single-nucleotide variant (chr18:52417839 G>C) in the tumor cells of a follicular thyroid carcinoma patient, which affects the binding of the tumor suppressor protein p53 and correlates with decreased expression of its target gene TXNL1. In conclusion, Pico-Seq can reliably detect DHSs in single cells, greatly extending the range of applications of DHS analysis for both basic and translational research and may provide critical information for personalized medicine.