| Abstract |
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Spatial organization of chromatin plays an important role at multiple levels of genome regulation. On a global scale, its
function is evident in processes like metaphase and chromosome segregation. On a detailed level, long-range interactions between
regulatory elements and promoters are essential for proper gene regulation. Microscopic techniques like FISH can detect chromatin
contacts, although the resolution is generally low making detection of enhancer–promoter interaction difficult. The 3C methodology
allows for high-resolution analysis of chromatin interactions. 3C is now widely used and has revealed that long-range looping
interactions between genomic elements are widespread. However, studying chromatin interactions in large genomic regions by
3C is very labor intensive. This limitation is overcome by the 5C technology. 5C is an adaptation of 3C, in which the concurrent
use of thousands of primers permits the simultaneous detection of millions of chromatin contacts. The design of the 5C primers
is critical because this will determine which and how many chromatin interactions will be examined in the assay. Starting
material for 5C is a 3C template. To make a 3C template, chromatin interactions in living cells are cross-linked using formaldehyde.
Next, chromatin is digested and subsequently ligated under conditions favoring ligation events between cross-linked fragments.
This yields a genome-wide 3C library of ligation products representing all chromatin interactions in vivo. 5C then employs
multiplex ligation-mediated amplification to detect, in a single assay, up to millions of unique ligation products present
in the 3C library. The resulting 5C library can be analyzed by microarray analysis or deep sequencing. The observed abundance
of a 5C product is a measure of the interaction frequency between the two corresponding chromatin fragments. The power of
the 5C technique described in this chapter is the high-throughput, high-resolution, and quantitative way in which the spatial
organization of chromatin can be examined.
Affiliation(s): (1) Program in Gene Function and Expression and Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA, USA
Series: Methods in Molecular Biology | Volume: 567 | Pub. Date: Aug-01-2009 | Page Range: 189-213 | DOI: 10.1007/978-1-60327-414-2_13
Subject: Genetics/Genomics
Key Words: Chromosome conformation capture - chromatin looping - chromatin structure - long-range gene regulation - high-throughput
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