Chromatin Immunoprecipitation – Technology advances every day
The world of technology advances every day, with new technologies that make many implications for mankind.
Chromatin Immunoprecipitation or ChIP or Chromatin IP is a technique which is used for the investigation of the impact on gene expression due to association between particular genomic regions and proteins such as histones or histone alterations and transcription factors. There is a wide variety of ChIP kit available
The method of Chromatin Immunoprecipitation can be briefly explained as follows. Firstly in a cell lysate, the protein and DNA complexes composing chromatin are bonded temporarily. Then the chromatin is sheared followed by the specific immunoprecipitation of the needed fragments. After that these fragments of DNA are purified and then the determination of the corresponding gene is done.
Normally ChIP Assay requires 4-5 days to complete and also at least cells in a quantity of 106~ 107 numbers are needed. Nowadays with the latest techniques, only 100-1000 cells are needed and the process is accomplished within a day. Few among the latest techniques for Chromatin Immunoprecipitation include Carrier ChIP, Fast ChIP, Matrix ChIP, Micro ChIP, Quick and Quantitative ChIP, ChIP-on-chip and ChIP-seq.
These techniques have brought dramatic change in the scenario of gene regulation study and they find application in the niches of cancer research, cellular differentiation (including stem cells) and many more. Surely epigenetics research will lead to new diagnostic tools, new drugs and a much better understanding of the overall Gene Regulation field.