Genomic DNA wraps around core histones to form nucleosomes, which provides steric constraints on how transcription factors (TFs) can interact with gene regulatory sequences. It is increasingly apparent that well-positioned, accessible nucleosomes are an inherent feature of active enhancers and can facilitate cooperative TF binding, referred to as nucleosome-mediated cooperativity. Thus, profiling chromatin and nucleosome properties (accessibility, positioning, and occupancy) on the genome is crucial to understand cell-type-specific gene regulation. Here we describe a simplified protocol to profile accessible nucleosomes in the mammalian genome using low-level and high-level micrococcal nuclease (MNase) digestion followed by genome-wide sequencing.
Keywords: Accessible nucleosome; Chromatin accessibility; Fragile nucleosome; MNase-seq; Nucleosome occupancy; Nucleosome positioning.
© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.