We thank the rest of the members from the Javierre lab for their feedback on the manuscript. We thank CERCA Program, Generalitat de Catalunya, and the Josep Carreras Foundation for institutional support. This work was financed by FEDER/Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (RTI2018-094788-A-I00), the European Hematology Association (4823998), and the Spanish Association against Cancer (AECC) LABAE21981JAVI. BMJ is funded by La Caixa Banking Foundation Junior Leader project (LCF/BQ/PI19/11690001), LR is funded by an AGAUR FI fellowship (2019FI-B00017), and LT-D is funded by an FPI Fellowship (PRE2019-088005). We thank the biochemistry and molecular biology PhD program from the Universitat Aut&#242;noma de Barcelona for its support.&#160;None of the funders were involved at any point in the experimental design or manuscript writing.

A Comprehensive Approach to Studying the Promoter Interactome in Scarce Cells

The authors have nothing to disclose.

liCHi-C offers the capability of generating high-resolution promoter interactome libraries using a similar experimental framework from PCHi-C&#39;s but with a vastly reduced cell number. This is greatly achieved by eliminating unnecessary steps, such as phenol purification and biotin removal. In the classical in-nucleus ligation Hi-C protocol57 and its subsequent derivative technique PCHi-C, biotin is removed from non-ligated restriction fragments to avoid pulling down DNA fragments that are after...

Temporal gene expression drives cell differentiation and, ultimately, organism development, and its alteration is closely related to a wide plethora of diseases1,2,3,4,5. Gene transcription is finely regulated by the action of regulatory elements, which can be classified as proximal (i.e., gene promoters) and distal (e.g., enhancers or silencers), the latter of which are frequently located afar from their target genes and physically interact with them through chromatin looping to modulate gene expression6,7,8.
The identification of distal regulatory regions in the genome is a matter which is widely agreed upon, since these regions harbor specific histone modifications9,10,11 and contain specific transcription factor recognition motifs, acting as recruiting platforms for them12,13,14. Besides, in the case of enhancers and super-enhancers15,16, they also have low-nucleosome occupancy17,18 and are transcribed into non-coding eRNAs19,20.
Nonetheless, each distal regulatory element&#39;s target genes are more difficult to predict. More often than not, interactions between distal regulatory elements and their targets are cell-type and stimulus specific21,22, span hundreds of kilobases, bridging over other genes in any direction23,24,25, and can even be located inside intronic regions of their target gene or other non-intervening genes26,27. Furthermore, distal regulatory elements can also control more than one gene at the same time, and vice versa28,29. This positional complexity hinders pinpointing regulatory associations between them, and therefore, most of each regulatory element&#39;s targets in every cell type remain unknown.
During recent years, there has been a significant boom in the development of chromosome conformation capture (3C) techniques for studying chromatin interactions. The most widely used of them, Hi-C, allows to generate a map of all the interactions between every fragment of a cell&#39;s genome30. However, to detect significant interactions at the restriction fragment level, Hi-C relies on ultra-deep sequencing, prohibiting its use to routinely study the regulatory landscape of individual genes. To overcome this economic limitation, several enrichment-based 3C techniques have emerged, such as ChIA-PET31, HiChIP32, and its low-input counterpart HiCuT33. These techniques depend on the use of antibodies to enrich for genome-wide interactions mediated by a specific protein. Nonetheless, the unique feature of these 3C techniques is also the bane of their application; users count on the availability of high-quality antibodies for the protein of interest and cannot compare conditions in which the binding of the protein is dynamic.
Promoter Capture Hi-C (PCHi-C) is another enrichment-based 3C technique that circumvents these limitations34,35. By employing a biotinylated RNA probe enrichment system, PCHi-C is able to generate genome-wide high-resolution libraries of genomic regions interacting with 28,650 human- or 27,595 mouse-annotated gene promoters, also known as the promoter interactome. This approach allows one to detect significant long-range interactions at the restriction fragment level resolution of both active and inactive promoters, and robustly compare promoter interactomes between any condition independently of the dynamics of histone modifications or protein binding. PCHi-C has been widely used over recent years to identify promoter interactome reorganizations during cell differentiation36,37, identify the mechanism of action of transcription factors38,39, and discover new potential genes and pathways deregulated in disease by non-coding variants40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48, alongside new driver non-coding mutations49,50. Besides, by just modifying the capture system, this technique can be customized according to the biological question to interrogate any interactome (e.g., the enhancer interactome51 or the interactome of a collection of non-coding alterations41,52).
However, PCHi-C relies on a minimum of 20 million cells to perform the technique, which prevents the study of scarce cell populations such as the ones often used in developmental biology and clinical applications. For this reason, we have developed low input Capture Hi-C (liCHi-C), a new cost-effective and customizable method based on the experimental framework of PCHi-C to generate high-resolution promoter interactomes with low-cell input. By performing the experiment with minimal tube changes, swapping or eliminating steps from the original PCHi-C protocol, drastically reducing reaction volumes, and modifying reagent concentrations, library complexity is maximized and it is possible to generate high-quality libraries with as little as 50,000 cells53.
Low input Capture Hi-C (liCHi-C) has been benchmarked against PCHi-C and used to elucidate promoter interactome rewiring during human hematopoietic cell differentiation, discover potential new disease-associated genes and pathways deregulated by non-coding alterations, and detect chromosomal abnormalities53. The step-by-step protocol and the different quality controls through the technique are detailed here until the final generation of the libraries and their computational analysis.

<table border="1" fo:keep-together.within-page="1" fo:keep-with-next.within-page="always">
	<tbody>
		<tr>
			<td>0.4 mM Biotin-14-dATP</td>
			<td>Invitrogen</td>
			<td>19524-016</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>0.5 M EDTA pH 8.0</td>
			<td>Invitrogen</td>
			<td>AM9260G</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>1 M Tris pH 8.0</td>
			<td>Invitrogen</td>
			<td>AM9855G</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>10x NEBuffer 2</td>
			<td>New England Biolabs</td>
			<td>B7002S</td>
			<td>Referenced as restriction buffer 2 in the manuscript</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>10x PBS</td>
			<td>Fisher Scientific</td>
			<td>BP3994</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>10x T4 DNA ligase reaction buffer</td>
			<td>New England Biolabs</td>
			<td>B0202S</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>16% formaldehyde solution (w/v), methanol-free</td>
			<td>Thermo Scientific</td>
			<td>28908</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>20 mg/mL Bovine Serum Albumin</td>
			<td>New England Biolabs</td>
			<td>B9000S</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>5 M NaCl</td>
			<td>Invitrogen</td>
			<td>AM9760G</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>5PRIME Phase Lock Gel Light tubes</td>
			<td>Qiuantabio</td>
			<td>2302820</td>
			<td>For phenol-chloroform purification in section 4 (DNA purification). Phase Lock Gel tubes are a commercial type of tubes specially designed to maximize DNA recovery after phenol-chloroform purifications while avoiding carryover of contaminants in the organic phase by containing a resin of intermediate density which settles between the organic and aqueous phase and isolates them. PLG tubes should be spun at 12,000 x g for 30 s before use to ensure that the resin is well-placed at the bottom of the tube</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Adapters and PCR primers for library amplification</td>
			<td>Integrated DNA Technologies</td>
			<td>-</td>
			<td>Bought as individual primers with PAGE purification for NGS</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Cell scrappers</td>
			<td>Nunc</td>
			<td>179693</td>
			<td>Or any other brand</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Centrifuge (fixed-angle rotor for 1.5 mL tubes)</td>
			<td>Any brand</td>
			<td></td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>CHiCAGO R package</td>
			<td>1.14.0</td>
			<td></td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>CleanNGS beads</td>
			<td>CleanNA</td>
			<td>CNGS-0050</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>dATP, dCTP, dGTP, dTTP</td>
			<td>Promega</td>
			<td>U120A, U121A, U122A, U123A</td>
			<td>Or any other brand</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>DNA LoBind tube, 1.5 mL</td>
			<td>Eppendorf</td>
			<td>30108051</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>DNA LoBind tube, 2 mL</td>
			<td>Eppendorf</td>
			<td>30108078</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>DNA polymerase I large (Klenow) fragment 5000 units/mL</td>
			<td>New England Biolabs</td>
			<td>M0210L</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Dynabeads MyOne Streptavidin C1 beads</td>
			<td>Invitrogen</td>
			<td>65002</td>
			<td>For biotin pull-down of the pre-captured library in section 8 (biotin pull-down)</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Dynabeads MyOne Streptavidin T1 beads</td>
			<td>Invitrogen</td>
			<td>65602</td>
			<td>For biotin pull-down of the post-captured library in section 11 (biotin pull-down and PCR amplification)</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>DynaMag-2</td>
			<td>Invitrogen</td>
			<td>12321D</td>
			<td>Or any other magnet suitable for 1.5 ml tubeL</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Ethanol absolute</td>
			<td>VWR</td>
			<td>20821.321</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>FBS, qualified</td>
			<td>Gibco</td>
			<td>10270-106</td>
			<td>Or any other brand</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Glycine</td>
			<td>Fisher BioReagents</td>
			<td>BP381-1</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>GlycoBlue Coprecipitant</td>
			<td>Invitrogen</td>
			<td>AM9515</td>
			<td>Used for DNA coprecipitation in section 4 (DNA purification)</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>HiCUP</td>
			<td>0.8.2</td>
			<td></td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>HindIII, 100 U/&#181;L</td>
			<td>New England Biolabs</td>
			<td>R0104T</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>IGEPAL CA-630</td>
			<td>Sigma-Aldrich</td>
			<td>I8896-50ML</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Klenow EXO- 5000 units/mL</td>
			<td>New England Biolabs</td>
			<td>M0212L</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Low-retention filter tips&#160;(10 &#181;L, 20 &#181;L, 200 &#181;L and 1000 &#181;L)</td>
			<td>ZeroTip</td>
			<td>PMT233010, PMT252020, PMT231200, PMT252000</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>M220 Focused-ultrasonicator</td>
			<td>Covaris</td>
			<td>500295</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Micro TUBE AFA Fiber Pre-slit snap cap 6 x 16 mm vials</td>
			<td>Covaris</td>
			<td>520045</td>
			<td>For sonication in section 6 (sonication)</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>NheI-HF, 100 U/&#181;L</td>
			<td>New England Biolabs</td>
			<td>R3131M</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Nuclease-free molecular biology grade water</td>
			<td>Sigma-Aldrich</td>
			<td>W4502</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>PCR primers for quality controls</td>
			<td>Integrated DNA Technologies</td>
			<td>-</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>PCR strips&#160;and caps</td>
			<td>Agilent Technologies</td>
			<td>410022, 401425</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Phenol: Chloroform: Isoamyl Alcohol 25:24:1, Saturated with 10 mM Tris, pH 8.0, 1 mM EDTA</td>
			<td>Sigma-Aldrich</td>
			<td>P3803</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Phusion&#160;High-Fidelity PCR Master Mix with HF Buffer</td>
			<td>New England Biolabs</td>
			<td>M0531L</td>
			<td>For amplification of the library in sections 9 (dATP-tailing, adapter ligation and PCR amplification) 
			and 11 (biotin pull-down and PCR amplification)</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Protease inhibitor cocktail (EDTA-free)</td>
			<td>Roche</td>
			<td>11873580001</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Proteinase K, recombinant, PCR grade</td>
			<td>Roche</td>
			<td>3115836001</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Qubit 1x dsDNA High Sensitivity kit</td>
			<td>Invitrogen</td>
			<td>Q33230</td>
			<td>For DNA quantification after precipitation in section 4 (DNA purification)</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Qubit assay tubes</td>
			<td>Invitrogen</td>
			<td>Q32856</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>rCutsmart buffer</td>
			<td>New England Biolabs</td>
			<td>B6004S</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>RPMI Medium 1640 1x + GlutaMAX</td>
			<td>Gibco</td>
			<td>61870-010</td>
			<td>Or any other brand</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>SDS - Solution 10% for molecular biology</td>
			<td>PanReac AppliChem</td>
			<td>A0676</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Sodium acetate pH 5.2</td>
			<td>Sigma-Aldrich</td>
			<td>S7899-100ML</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>SureSelect custom 3-5.9 Mb library</td>
			<td>Agilent Technologies</td>
			<td>5190-4831</td>
			<td>Custom designed mouse or human capture system, used for the capture</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>SureSelect Target Enrichment Box 1</td>
			<td>Agilent Technologies</td>
			<td>5190-8645</td>
			<td>Used for the capture</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>SureSelect Target Enrichment Kit ILM PE Full Adapter</td>
			<td>Agilent Technologies</td>
			<td>931107</td>
			<td>Used for the capture</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>T4 DNA ligase 1 U/&#181;L</td>
			<td>Invitrogen</td>
			<td>15224025</td>
			<td>For ligation in section 3 (ligation and decrosslink)</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>T4 DNA ligase 2000000/mL</td>
			<td>New England Biolabs</td>
			<td>M0202T</td>
			<td>For ligation in section 9 (dATP-tailing, adapter ligation and PCR amplification)</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>T4 DNA polymerase 3000 units/mL</td>
			<td>New England Biolabs</td>
			<td>M0203L</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>T4 PNK 10000 units/mL</td>
			<td>New England Biolabs</td>
			<td>M0201L</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Tapestation 4200 instrument</td>
			<td>Agilent Technologies</td>
			<td></td>
			<td>For automated electrophoresis in section 9 (dATP-tailing, adapter ligation, and PCR amplification) and 
			section 11 (Biotin pull-down and PCR amplification). Any other automated electrophoresis system is valid</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Tapestation reagents</td>
			<td>Agilent Technologies</td>
			<td>5067-5582, 5067-5583, 5067-5584, 5067-5585,</td>
			<td>For automated electrophoresis in section 9 (dATP-tailing, adapter ligation, and PCR amplification) and 
			section 11 (Biotin pull-down and PCR amplification). Any other automated electrophoresis system is valid</td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Triton X-100 for molecular biology</td>
			<td>PanReac AppliChem</td>
			<td>A4975</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
		<tr>
			<td>Tween 20</td>
			<td>Sigma-Aldrich</td>
			<td>P9416-50ML</td>
			<td></td>
		</tr>
	</tbody>
</table>

an integrated workflow to study the promoter-centric spatio-temporal genome architecture in scarce cell populations

Spatiotemporal gene transcription is tightly regulated by distal regulatory elements, such as enhancers and silencers, which rely on physical proximity with their target gene promoters to control transcription. Although these regulatory elements are easy to identify, their target genes are difficult to predict, since most of them are cell-type specific and may be separated by hundreds of kilobases in the linear genome sequence, skipping over other non-target genes. For several years, Promoter Capture Hi-C (PCHi-C) has been the gold standard for the association of distal regulatory elements to their target genes. However, PCHi-C relies on the availability of millions of cells, prohibiting the study of rare cell populations such as those commonly obtained from primary tissues. To overcome this limitation, low input Capture Hi-C (liCHi-C), a cost-effective and customizable method to identify the repertoire of distal regulatory elements controlling each gene of the genome, has been developed. liCHi-C relies on a similar experimental and computational framework as PCHi-C, but by employing minimal tube changes, modifying&#160;the reagent concentration and volumes, and swapping or eliminating steps, it accounts&#160;for minimal material loss during library construction. Collectively, liCHi-C enables the study of gene regulation and spatiotemporal genome organization in the context of developmental biology and cellular function.

Author Spotlight: An Integrated Workflow to Study the Promoter-Centric Spatio-Temporal Genome Architecture in Scarce Cell Populations  

An Integrated Workflow to Study the Promoter-Centric Spatio-Temporal Genome Architecture in Scarce Cell Populations

With liCHi-C, the main question that we are trying to answer is how the chromatin interacts in the nucleus, and therefore, to understand a new layer of gene regulation. We have proven with liCHi-C that we can explore the genome organization of a given sample, link the non-coding mutation associated with disease with potential genes affected, and detect chromosomal rearrangements, such as translocation, for example, in tumor samples. Now we can explore the 3D chromatin organization of scar cell types, such as primary stem cells or relevant clinical samples.Our protocol reduces the input materials and the time and cost needed to obtain quality data to explore the genome organization at the restriction fragment resolution. liCHi-C is expanding the reach of the 3D chromatin organization field, allowing us to explore new cell types previously impossible to analyze. Thanks to liCHi-C, the scientific community can explore the special regulation of gene expression.For example, in malignant transformation only in a specific clonal sub-population inside a tumor.

liCHi-C offers the possibility of generating high-quality and resolution genome-wide promoter interactome libraries with as little as 50,000 cells53. This is accomplished by &#8211; besides the drastic reduction of reaction volumes and the use of DNA low-binding plasticware throughout the protocol&#160;&#8211; removing unnecessary steps from the original protocol, in which significant material losses occur. These include the phenol purification after decrosslinking, the biotin removal, and subsequ...

Watch this Scientific Journal Video about An Integrated Workflow to Study the Promoter-Centric Spatio-Temporal Genome Architecture in Scarce Cell Populations at JoVE.com

Gene expression is regulated by interactions of gene promoters with distal regulatory elements. Here, we descirbe how low input Capture Hi-C (liCHi-C) allows the identification of these interactions in rare cell types, which were previously unmeasurable.

Spatiotemporal gene transcription is tightly regulated by distal regulatory elements, such as enhancers and silencers, which rely on physical proximity ...

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968 Views.  Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute. With liCHi-C, the main question that we are trying to answer is how the chromatin interacts in the nucleus, and therefore, to understand a new layer of gene regulation. We have proven with liCHi-C that we can explore the genome organization of a given sample, link the non-coding mutation associated with disease with potential genes affected, and detect chromosomal rearrangements, such as translocation, for example, in tumor samples. Now we can explore the 3D chromatin organization of scar cel...