An Efficient Chromatin Immunoprecipitation Protocol for the Analysis of Histone Modification Distributions in the Brown Alga Ectocarpus

Simon Bourdareau (1) , Olivier Godfroy (1) , Josselin Gueno (1) , Delphine Scornet (1) , Susana Coelho (1) , Leila Tirichine (2) , J. Mark Cock (1)

1 LBI2M - Laboratoire de Biologie Intégrative des Modèles Marins
2 UFIP - Unité de fonctionnalité et ingénierie de protéines

The brown algae are an important but understudied group of multicellular marine organisms. A number of genetic and genomic tools have been developed for the model brown alga Ectocarpus; this includes, most recently, chromatin immunoprecipitation methodology, which allows genome-wide detection and analysis of histone post-translational modifications. Post-translational modifications of histone molecules have been shown to play an important role in gene regulation in organisms from other major eukaryotic lineages, and this methodology will therefore be a very useful tool to investigate genome function in the brown algae. This article provides a detailed, step-by-step description of the Ectocarpus ChIP protocol, which effectively addresses the difficult problem of efficiently extracting chromatin from cells protected by a highly resistant cell wall. The protocol described here will be an essential tool for the future application of chromatin analysis methodologies in brown algal research.

Keywords: brown algae; chromatin; chromatin immunoprecipitation; ChIP-seq; Ectocarpus; Phaeophyceae

Domains: Life Sciences [q-bio]; Biochemistry, Molecular Biology; Biochemistry [q-bio.BM]; Life Sciences [q-bio]; Vegetal Biology; Botanics

Simon Bourdareau, Olivier Godfroy, Josselin Gueno, Delphine Scornet, Susana Coelho, et al.. An Efficient Chromatin Immunoprecipitation Protocol for the Analysis of Histone Modification Distributions in the Brown Alga Ectocarpus. Methods and Protocols, 2022, 5 (3), pp.36. ⟨10.3390/mps5030036⟩. ⟨hal-03658367⟩