Profiling the epigenome at home

Steven Henikoff; Jorja G. Henikoff

CUT&Tag@home implements a streamlined version of the bench-top protocol that allows for chromatin profiling without tube transfers from nuclei to purified sequencing-ready barcoded libraries (Kaya-Okur et al., 2020) . Elimination of the DNA purification steps of CUT&Tag allows all operations from mixing of nuclei with magnetic beads to final library purification to be performed entirely by successive treatments of bead-bound nuclei in a single PCR tube. This protocol can be performed on as many as 32 samples in a single day with starting cell numbers ranging from <100 to ~100,000. We have extended the versatility of this streamlined CUT&Tag protocol by demonstrating that it can be performed with minor equipment, reagent and supply needs using materials borrowed from the lab or purchased online and delivered. This enables researchers, students and others with little hands-on laboratory experience to perform chromatin profiling at home. Although we do not expect that quantification, quality control and pooling of barcoded samples and sequencing to be also done at home, these services are likely to be available at many commercial and academic facilities, even during the COVID-19 crisis. In the longer term, we expect that the simplicity of our CUT&Tag@home protocol makes it just as suitable for the lab bench as it is for the laundry room.