Chromatin Immunoprecipitation for Determining the Association of Proteins with Specific Genomic Sequences In Vivo

Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) is a powerful and widely applied technique for detecting the association of individual proteins with specific genomic regions in vivo. Live cells are treated with formaldehyde to generate protein-protein and protein- DNA cross-links between molecules in close proximity on the chromatin template in vivo. DNA sequences that cross-link with a given protein are selectively enriched and reversal of the formaldehyde cross-link permits recovery and quantitative analysis of the immunoprecipitated DNA. As formaldehyde inactivates cellular enzymes essentially immediately upon addition to cells, ChIP provides snapshots of protein-protein and protein- DNA interactions at a particular time point, and hence is useful for kinetic analysis of events occurring on chromosomal sequences in vivo. In addition, ChIP can be combined with microarray technology to identify the location of specific proteins on a genome-wide basis. This unit describes the ChIP protocol for Saccharomyces cerevisiae; however, it is also applicable to other organisms.