Porvair Sciences has launched a Chromatrap Enzymatic Shearing Kit containing reagents and buffers for up to 10 chromatin preparations.
The Chromatrap enzymatic shearing kit allows users to determine optimal shearing conditions for chromatin preparations and can supply sufficient chromatin to perform up to 24 ChIPs if using standard Chromatrap ChIP spin column kit, or up to 96 IP’s if using Chromatrap ChIP 96 High throughput microplate.
Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) is a technique used to study the association of specific proteins or their modified isoforms with defined genomic regions.
In a ChIP assay, DNA-protein complexes (Chromatin) are identified using matching antibodies and the resulting fractions treated to separate the DNA and protein components.
Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), Real Time PCR, hybridisation on microarrays, or direct sequencing are typically used to identify DNA fragments of defined sequence.
The Chromatrap ChIP assay is designed to be more efficient than the bead-based method as the solid phase porous polymer functionalised with either protein A or G is more efficient in capturing chromatin.
It also uses a spin column approach, offering significant advantage over the sepharose or magnetic beads.
The levels of DNA pull down with Chromatrap is claimed to be about 25 times more than conventional methods, and the signal to noise ratios for DNA enrichment is about twice or three times better - even with samples anywhere between 50ng to 3000ng chromatin per immunoprecipitation.
