ChIP-Seq: technical considerations for obtaining high-quality data

Chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by next-generation sequencing analysis (ChIP-Seq) is a powerful method with which to investigate the genome-wide distribution of chromatin-binding proteins and histone modifications in any genome with a known sequence. The application of this technique to a variety of developmental and differentiation systems has provided global views of the cis-regulatory elements, transcription factor function and epigenetic processes involved in the control of gene transcription. Here we describe several technical aspects of the ChIP-Seq assay that diminish bias and background noise and allow the consistent generation of high-quality data.