ROS-induced DNA damage is repaired in living cells within a temporal and spatial context, and chromatin structure is critical to a consideration of DNA repair processes in situ. It’s well known that chromatin remodeling factors participate in many DNA damage repair pathways, indicating the importance of chromatin remodeling in facilitating DNA damage repair. To date, there has been no method to induce site-specific oxidative DNA damage in living cells. Therefore, it is not known whether the DNA repair mechanisms differ within active or condensed chromatin. We recently established a novel method, DTG (Damage Targeted at one Genome-site), to study DNA damage response of reactive oxygen species (ROS)-induced DNA damage in living cell at one genome loci with active or inactive transcription. For this, we integrated a tetracycline responsive elements (TRE) cassette (~90 kb) at X-chromosome in U2OS cells (Lan et al., 2010), then fused KillerRed (KR), a light-stimulated ROS-inducer which can specifically produce ROS-induced DNA damage, to a tet-repressor (tetR-KR, OFF) or a transcription activator (TA-KR, ON) (Lan et al., 2014) (Figure 1). TetR-KR or TA-KR binds to the TRE cassette and induces ROS damage under hetero- or euchromatin states, respectively. How chromatin states regulate the DNA damage response processes can be examined by using this powerful method.

The basic unit of chromatin is the nucleosome, a histone octamer with 147 base pairs of DNA wrapped around it. Positions of nucleosomes relative to each other and to DNA elements have a strong impact on chromatin structure and gene activity and are tightly regulated at multiple levels, i.e., DNA sequence, transcription factor binding, histone modifications and variants, and chromatin remodeling enzymes (Bell et al., 2011; Hughes and Rando, 2014). Nucleosome positions in cells or isolated nuclei can be detected by partial nuclease digestion of native or cross-linked chromatin followed by ligation-mediated polymerase chain reaction (LM-PCR) (McPherson et al., 1993; Soutoglou and Talianidis, 2002). This protocol describes a nucleosome positioning assay using Micrococcal Nuclease (MNase) digestion of formaldehyde-fixed chromatin followed by LM-PCR. We exemplify the nucleosome positioning assay for the promoter of genes encoding ribosomal RNA (rRNA genes or rDNA) in mice, which has two mutually exclusive configurations. The rDNA promoter harbors either an upstream nucleosome (NucU) covering nucleotides -157 to -2 relative to the transcription start site, or a downstream nucleosome (NucD) at position -132 to +22 (Li et al., 2006; Xie et al., 2012). Radioactive labeling of LM-PCR products followed by denaturing urea-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis allows resolution and relative quantification of both configurations. As depicted in the diagram in Figure 1, the nucleosome positioning assay is a versatile low to medium throughput method to map discrete nucleosome positions with high precision in a semi-quantitative manner.


Figure 1. Flow chart depicting the nucleosome positioning assay. The diagram shows how the assay is used to detect the ratio between upstream (NucU) and downstream (NucD) nucleosome positions at the mouse rDNA promoter. After all steps have been performed, the LM-PCR yields two radiolabeled products that differ in size and correspond to NucU and NucD. Signal intensities of the bands reflect the relative abundance of each nucleosome position in the original sample.

Each cell contains many large DNA polymers packed in a nucleus of approx. 10 μm in diameter. With histones, these DNA polymers are known to form chromatins. How chromatins further compact in the nucleus is unclear but it inevitably depends on an extensive non-chromatin nuclear scaffold. Imaging of endogenous chromatin network and the complementary scaffold that support this network has not been achieved but biochemical and proteomic investigations of the scaffold can still provide important insights into this chromatin-organizing network. However, this demands highly inclusive and reproducible extraction of the nuclear scaffold. We have recently developed a simple protocol for releasing the scaffold components from chromatins. The inclusiveness of the extract was testified by the observation that, upon its extraction from the nuclei, the remaining nuclear chromatins were liberated into extended and often parallel chromatin fibers. Basically, this protocol includes the generation of pure nuclei, treatment of the nuclei with Triton X-100 to generate envelope-depleted nuclei (TxN), and extraction of the nuclei at 500 mM NaCl in a sucrose-containing buffer. This combined extract of TxN is known as TxNE.

Chromatin consists of compacted DNA in complex with proteins and contributes to the organization of DNA and its stability. Furthermore, chromatin plays key roles in regulating cellular processes such as DNA replication, transcription, DNA repair, and mitosis. Chromatin assumes more compact (inaccessible) or decondensed (accessible) conformations depending on the function that is being supported in the genome, either locally or globally. The activity of nucleases has been used previously to assess the accessibility of specific genomic regions in vitro, such as origins of replication at varying points in the cell cycle. Here, we provide an assay to determine the accessibility of specific human genomic regions (example used herein: Lamin B2 origin of DNA replication) by measuring the effect of DNase I nuclease on qPCR signal from the studied site. This assay provides a powerful method to interrogate the molecular mechanisms that regulate chromatin accessibility, and how these processes affect various cellular functions involving the human genome that require manipulation of chromatin conformation.

Shuttling of proteins between different cellular compartments controls their proteostasis and can contribute in some cases to regulate their activity. Biochemical analysis of chromatin-bound proteins, such as transcription factors, is often difficult because of their low yield and due to the interference from nucleic acids. This protocol describes a method to efficiently fractionate cells combined with a mechanical (i.e., sonication) or an enzymatic treatment (i.e., benzonase) that facilitates analysis of chromatin-bound protein extracts by Western blot analysis or by protein pull-down assays. This approach can be valuable to enrich a particular protein within a particular subcellular fraction either to study specific post-translational modification patterns or to identify specific protein-protein interactions.