Project description:Based on the different chemistries of phenol extraction of RNA versus commercial kits, we hypothesized that certain species of mRNA may be preferentially extracted depending upon method, which could masquerade as differential expression in downstream RNA-seq experiments. We tested this using Saccharomyces cerevisiae samples that only differ in the RNA isolation method: a "standard" hot phenol extraction, versus two different commercial RNA isolation kits. While the kits had comparable relative mRNA abundances, samples isolated with hot phenol had higher relative abundance of mRNAs encoding membrane proteins. We hypothesize that hot phenol better solubilizes mRNAs associated with cellular membranes. We then compared the effects of each RNA isolation method on the ability to identify differentially expressed transcripts, using the yeast heat shock response a test case. The method of RNA isolation had little effect on the ability to identify differentially expressed transcripts. Thus, experiments within a single lab are unlikely to be affected by the choice of RNA isolation method as long as the same method is used throughout an experiment. For meta-analyses however, researchers should be cautious if trying to compare experiments where the RNA isolation methods differ.
Project description:Analysis of COVID-19 hospitalized patients, with different kind of symptoms, by human rectal swabs collection and 16S sequencing approach.
Project description:Over the past two decades, the dominant technology for chromatin profiling has been chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP), in which cellular components are solubilized to fragment chromatin, and an antibody is added to precipitate a DNA/protein complex of interest. We previously described a novel alternative to ChIP, Cleavage Under Targets & Release Using Nuclease (CUT&RUN), in which the antibody is added to permeabilized cells followed by binding of a Protein A-Micrococcal Nuclease (pA/MNase) fusion protein to the antibody (PMID 29651053). Upon activation of tethered MNase, the bound complex is excised and released into the supernatant for DNA extraction and sequencing. Here we introduce four extensions to CUT&RUN: 1) a hybrid Protein A-Protein G-MNase construct that allows simplified purification using a commercial kit; 2) a modified digestion protocol that prevents release of the enzyme and so minimizes artifactual cleavage of accessible DNA; 3) a calibration strategy based on carryover of E. coli DNA introduced with the fusion protein; and 4) a novel peak-calling strategy that is customized for the low-background profiles obtained using CUT&RUN. These new features, coupled with the previously described low-cost, high efficiency, high reproducibility and high-throughput capability of CUT&RUN make it the method of choice for routine epigenomic profiling.