Histone modification profiling in normal and transformed human embryonic stem cells using micro chromatin immunoprecipitation, scalable to genome-wide microarray analyses
Schnerch, A.; Rampalii, S.; Bhatia, M.
Methods in Molecular Biology 1029: 149-161
2013
ISSN/ISBN: 1940-6029
PMID: 23756948
DOI: 10.1007/978-1-62703-478-4_11
Accession: 053566547
Comparing normal human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) to those that have acquired cellular properties of neoplasm provides a unique opportunity to study the distinguishing molecular features of human cellular transformation. As global alterations in the epigenetic landscape are a common feature of cancer, we sought to investigate the loci-specific and global differences between normal and transformed hESCs using ChIP-PCR and ChIP-microarray (also known as ChIP-chip). Here, specific emphasis was placed on optimizing ChIP for low cell numbers (termed micro-ChIP; μChIP) towards applications where the target population is rare, such as the case for somatic human tumors containing a low frequency of cancer stem cell populations and for single-colony analysis of embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells emerging from initial derivation. Using these methods, we suggest that μChIP-PCR and microarray analysis is thus a powerful technology for epigenetic profiling of cell populations relevant to developmental biology, cancer, and regenerative medicine where target populations regulating the biological process can only be isolated in small numbers.