Developmental Biology

Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are adult somatic cells, like skin or blood cells, that have been reprogrammed back to an embryonic stem cell-like state by inducing genes and epigenetic modifiers. They are powerful research and clinical tool since they are pluripotent cells that don’t come with the ethical concerns faced when using embryonic stem cells. Studies have found iPSC cells can differentiate into tissue that is nearly identical to cardiac, liver, muscle, and neural cells making them a great model system for understanding different diseases that can potentially be used for clinical therapy once the epigenetics and transcriptional activities associated with reprogramming and differentiation and fully understood.

Changes in chromatin interactions during differentiation alter up to 36% of active and inactive compartments, indicating topology features are a major player in cell differentiation.2 Comparing the interactome in iPSC and slightly more differentiated cells like neural stem cells can help understand how the gain or loss in enhancer and promoter contacts, as well as changes in topological boundaries, can help drive an iPSC cell towards one cell type over another. These features, while helping to understand cell differentiation, may also have disease implications in degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s Disease.

With kits like the HiChIP MNase kit, you’ll be able to:

• Get a genome-wide understanding of how chromatin architecture can drive stem cell fate towards one cell type or another
• Get a comprehensive view of protein binding & protein-mediated chromatin interactions without any bias due to restriction enzyme density
• Gather fine-scale, high-resolution topology mapping with an easy workflow that doesn’t require variable-introducing sonication

Life After ChIP-Seq: Genome Conformation Enhances Our View of the Regulatory Landscape webinar

1. Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells and Their Potential for Basic and Clinical Sciences. Ye Le, Swingen C, and Zhang J., Curr Cardiol Rev., 2013.
2. Chromatin Architecture Reorganization During Stem Cell Differentiation. Dixon et al., Nature, 2015.