Studies of epigenetics and transcription factors made easier with chromatin immunoprecipitation DNA microarray (ChIP-chip) kits.
Millipore has released its Magna ChIP chromatin immunoprecipitation DNA microarray kits. The company says these are the first kits to provide reagents, microarrays and validated protocols for the entire ChIP-chip workflow, allowing researchers to map entire gene regulatory networks and patterns of epigenetic marks using microarray technology.
Regulatory proteins affect gene expression by binding to DNA on a single site on the genome or at many different sites. The human genome contains three billion DNA base pairs of sequence, so determining all the DNA binding sites for a protein is a daunting task.
ChIP-chip is said to enable researchers to examine protein-DNA interactions on a genome-wide scale. However, because of the complexity of the protocol and the costs of obtaining the wide range of reagents, the method has, until now, been limited to only a small number of expertly trained, well-funded laboratories, says Millipore.
“Genome-scale ChIP analysis can assess the function of a particular epigenetic modification when genetic analysis is not possible because ChIP-chip and ChIP-seq provide the statistical power required for correlations," said epigenomics researcher Dr Mathieu Lupien, Assistant Professor of Genetics at Dartmouth Medical School, US.
Two types of kits are available from Millipore. The Magna ChIP2 Promoter Microarray kits contain the necessary reagents for ChIP-chip and either human or mouse Agilent promoter microarrays. The Magna ChIP2 Universal Microarray kits contain the necessary reagents for performing ChIP-chip with microarrays provided by the user.
The kits have been collaboratively developed by Millipore and Agilent Technologies.