Study: Diagenode stands out in MeDIP kit comparison
Clinical and public health research using methylated DNA immunoprecipitation (MeDIP). A comparison of commercially available kits to examine differential DNA methylation across the genome.
The researchers in this study compared three commercial kits, MagMeDIP Kit (Diagenode), Methylated-DNA IP Kit (Zymo Research), and MethylampTM Methylated DNA Capture Kit (Epigentek), to identify which kit provided better reliability and sensitivity for genomic DNA enrichment. Each kit was used to enrich two samples from either fresh tissue or cells, with two different DNA amounts. The enrichment efficiency and subsequent hybridization efficiency genome-wide methylation arrays was measured for each kit in a separate cohort of tissue samples. The researchers found that the MagMeDIP kit had the highest yield for the two DNA amounts and for both the tissue and cell line samples, as well as for the positive control. In addition, the DNA was successfully enriched from a 1:4 to 10:1 ratio. They concluded that the MagMeDIP kit can better enable clinical and public health genome-wide DNA methylation studies.
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Pre-B cell to macrophage transdifferentiation without significant promoter DNA methylation changes.
In this study, researchers studied the specific role of transcription factors in determining cell identity by investigating DNA methylation changes during C/EBPα-induced pre-B cell to macrophage transdifferentiation. They found that cell lineage conversion did not involve significant changes in DNA methylation in key B cell- and macrophage-specific genes and throughout the entire set of genes differentially methylated between the two parental cell types. Active and repressive histone modification marks, however, changed according to the expression levels of these genes. C/EBPα and RNA Pol II were associated with the methylated promoters of macrophage-specific genes in reprogrammed macrophages without inducing methylation changes. These findings provide insights into epigenetic events in pre-B cell to macrophage transdifferentiation and show an important difference to reprogramming towards pluripotency where promoter DNA demethylation is critical. To help obtain this data, the researchers used a number of antibodies and the MethylCAP kit from Diagenode.
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