ChIP-seq Analysis of Human Chronic Myeloid Leukemia Cells

Many transcription factors, chromatin-associated proteins and regulatory DNA elements are genetically and/or epigenetically altered in cancer, including Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML). This leads to deregulation of transcription that is often causally linked to the tumorigenic state. Chromatin-immunoprecipitation coupled with massively parallel DNA sequencing (ChIP-seq) is the key technology to study transcription as it allows in vivo whole-genome mapping of epigenetic modifications and interactions of proteins with DNA or chromatin. However, numerous DNA/chromatin-binding proteins, including EZH2, remain difficult to "ChIP," thus yielding genome-wide binding maps of only suboptimal quality. Here, we describe a ChIP-seq protocol optimized for high-quality protein-genome binding maps that have proven especially useful for studying difficult to 'ChIP' transcription regulatory factors in Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) and related malignancies.