Identification of Functionally-Relevant Lentivirus Integration Sites in an Insertional Mutagenesis Cell Library

The extent of functional sequences within the human genome is a pivotal yet debated topic in biology. Although high-throughput reverse genetic screens have made strides in exploring this, they often limit their scope to known genomic elements and may introduce non-specific effects. This underscores the urgent need for novel functional genomics tools that enable a deeper, unbiased understanding of genome functionality. This protocol introduces the Insertion-based Screen for functional Elements and Transcripts (InSET), a method for identifying lentivirus integration sites within a lentivirus-based insertional mutagenesis cell library. InSET facilitates the capture of genome-wide lentiviral integration sites, with next-generation sequencing used to detect and quantify flanking sequences. InSET's design enables the analysis of integration site abundance variations in phenotypic screens on a large scale, establishing it as a robust tool for forward genetics and for identifying functional genomic elements. A key benefit of InSET is its capacity to reveal previously unidentified genomic elements, including novel functional exons of both protein-coding and non-coding RNAs, independent of prior annotation. Overall, InSET holds significant value in studying the intricate complexity of the human genome and transcriptome, where many genomic elements await functional characterization.