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Updated: Jun 23, 2026
08:34
Automating ChIP-seq Experiments to Generate Epigenetic Profiles on 10,000 HeLa Cells
Published on: December 10, 2014
Automated microfluidic chromatin immunoprecipitation from 2,000 cells
Angela R Wu1, Joseph B Hiatt, Rong Lu
1Dept. of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, CA 94305, USA.
Lab on a Chip
|May 7, 2009
Summary
A new automated microfluidic device enables sensitive chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) analysis using significantly fewer cells. This rapid, automated ChIP assay is comparable to traditional methods but works with rare cell types.
Area of Science:
- Molecular Biology
- Biotechnology
- Genomics
Background:
- Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) is crucial for studying DNA-protein interactions.
- Traditional ChIP assays are time-consuming, labor-intensive, and require substantial cell numbers.
- This limits ChIP's application in rare cell populations like stem and cancer cells.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop a rapid, automated microfluidic device for sensitive ChIP analysis.
- To enable ChIP analysis on low cell numbers while maintaining assay specificity.
- To overcome limitations of conventional ChIP methods for rare cell types.
Main Methods:
- Design and implementation of a microfluidic device for ChIP.
- Automated chromatin immunoprecipitation (AutoChIP) protocol.
- Comparison of AutoChIP with conventional ChIP using modified histone protein targets.
Main Results:
- The automated microfluidic ChIP (AutoChIP) assay achieved comparable results to conventional ChIP.
- AutoChIP successfully analyzed samples using as few as 2,000 cells.
- Conventional ChIP methods required 50,000-500,000 cells for similar results.
Conclusions:
- The developed microfluidic device offers a sensitive, rapid, and automated ChIP solution.
- This technology facilitates ChIP analysis on low cell numbers, expanding its applications.
- AutoChIP can enable studies on rare cell types previously inaccessible to ChIP.
Related Concept Videos
02:36Chromatin Immunoprecipitation- ChIP
Chromatin immunoprecipitation, or ChIP, is an antibody-based technique used to identify sites on DNA that bind to transcription factors of interest or histone proteins. It also helps determine the type of histone modifications such as acetylation, phosphorylation, or methylation.
Types of ChIP
ChIP can be divided into two types - X-ChIP and N-ChIP. X-ChIP involves in vivo cross-linking of histones and regulatory proteins to DNA, fragmenting the DNA by sonication, and isolating the protein-DNA...
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ChIP can be divided into two types - X-ChIP and N-ChIP. X-ChIP involves in vivo cross-linking of histones and regulatory proteins to DNA, fragmenting the DNA by sonication, and isolating the protein-DNA...
01:20Immunoprecipitation
Immunoprecipitation, or IP, is a widely used technique that employs protein-antibody interactions to isolate proteins or protein complexes in their native state for studying protein-protein interactions, quaternary structures, or supramolecular complexes. Various modifications of the technique, including chromatin IP, cross-linking IP, and fluorescence IP, are commonly used.
Chromatin Immunoprecipitation
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