A new high-resolution approach for the genome-wide detection of DNase I hypersensitive sites (DHSs) can be applied to single cells. Approximately 317,000 unique reads and 38,000 DHSs, on average, were detected per single cell by single-cell DNase sequencing (scDNase-seq). The authors show that pooled DHSs of five single NIH3T3 cells correlate significantly with those of 1,000 cells, and single-cell DHS patterns are highly reproducible between individual cells. Single-cell DHSs predicted enhancers that regulate cell-specific gene expression programmes, and cell-to-cell variations of individual DHSs were predictive of gene expression. scDNase-seq of cells dissected from formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue slides obtained from patients with thyroid cancer identified thousands of tumour-specific DHSs.
References
Jin, W. et al. Genome-wide detection of DNase I hypersensitive sites in single cells and FFPE tissue samples. Nature http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature15740 (2015)
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Koch, L. Mapping open chromatin in single cells. Nat Rev Genet 17, 6 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg.2015.20
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrg.2015.20