Immunoprecipitation of RNA:DNA Hybrids from Budding Yeast

During transcription, the nascent transcript behind an elongating RNA polymerase (RNAP) can invade the DNA duplex and hybridize with the complementary DNA template strand, generating a three-stranded "R-loop" structure, composed of an RNA:DNA duplex and an unpaired non-template DNA strand. R-loops can be strongly associated with actively transcribed loci by all RNAPs including the mitochondrial RNA polymerase (mtRNAP). In this chapter, we describe two protocols for the detection of RNA:DNA hybrids in living budding yeast cells, one that uses conventional chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP-qPCR) and one that uses DNA:RNA immunoprecipitation (DRIP-qPCR). Both protocols make use of the S9.6 antibody, which is believed to recognize the intermediate A/B helical RNA:DNA duplex conformation, with no sequence specificity.