Chromatin Extraction from Frozen Chimeric Liver Tissue for Chromatin Immunoprecipitation Analysis

Crosslinking Chromatin Immunoprecipitation (X-ChIP) is a widely used technique to assess levels of histone marks and occupancy of transcription factors on host and/or pathogen chromatin. Chromatin preparation from tissues creates additional challenges that need to be overcome to obtain reproducible and reliable protocols comparable to those used for cell culture. Tissue disruption and fixation are critical steps to achieve efficient shearing of chromatin. Coexistence of different cell types and clusters may also require different shearing times to reach optimal fragment size and hinders shearing reproducibility. The purpose of this method is to achieve reliable and reproducible host chromatin preparations from frozen tissue (liver) suitable for both ChIP-qPCR and next generation sequencing (NGS) applications. We observed that the combination of liquid nitrogen tissue pulverization followed by homogenization leads to increased reproducibility compared to homogenization only, since it provides a suspension consisting mostly of dissociated single cells that can be efficiently sheared. Moreover, the fixation step should be performed under mild rotation to provide homogeneous crosslinking. The fixed material is then suitable for buffer-based nuclei isolation, to reduce contamination of cytoplasmic protein and pathogen DNAs and RNAs (when applicable), avoiding time-consuming centrifugation gradients. Subsequent sonication will complete nuclear lysis and shear the chromatin, producing a specific size range according to the chosen shearing conditions. The size range should fall between 100 and 300 nt for NGS applications, while it could be higher (300-700 nt) for ChIP-qPCR analysis. Such protocol adaptations can greatly improve chromatin analyses from frozen tissue specimens.