Dendritic antigen-presenting cells help regulate immune system functions through transcription factors like Irf4, which is needed for proper CD11b+ dendritic cell lineage development. Malfunctions in this development have been linked to various inflammatory diseases including asthma. But the epigenetic connections between CD11b+ immune cell specialization and inflammatory disease are virtually unknown.
Using the Ion Proton System and the PI™ Chip, a team from the National Jewish Health Center for Genes, Environment and Health in Denver, Colorado, in collaboration with the Ion Torrent™ group of Thermo Fisher Scientific developed chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing (ChIP-seq) on the Ion Proton™ sequencing platform. They created an unbiased, genome-wide view of transcription factor binding sites of Irf4, using fewer than 5 million flow-sorted CD11b+ dendritic cells. (The poster doesn’t indicate this explicitly, but the MAGnify™ ChIP Kit was used for the IP.) This analysis identified Irf4 gene targets that were expressed in CD11b+ as well as DC103+ dendritic cells, which may constitute a regulation program for Irf4 control of dendritic cell lineage development.
The team presented their findings at the recent annual meeting of the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
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