Li Haikuo, Bao Shuozhen, Farzad Negin, Qin Xiaoyu, Fung Anthony A, Zhang Di, Bai Zhiliang, Tao Bo, Fan Rong
Department of Biomedical Engineering, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
Department of Pathology, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT, USA.
Nat Protoc. 2025 Mar 21. doi: 10.1038/s41596-025-01145-9.
The epigenome of a cell is tightly correlated with gene transcription, which controls cell identity and diverse biological activities. Recent advances in spatial technologies have improved our understanding of tissue heterogeneity by analyzing transcriptomics or epigenomics with spatial information preserved, but have been mainly restricted to one molecular layer at a time. Here we present procedures for two spatially resolved sequencing methods, spatial-ATAC-RNA-seq and spatial-CUT&Tag-RNA-seq, that co-profile transcriptome and epigenome genome wide. In both methods, transcriptomic readouts are generated through tissue fixation, permeabilization and in situ reverse transcription. In spatial-ATAC-RNA-seq, Tn5 transposase is used to probe accessible chromatin, and in spatial-CUT&Tag-RNA-seq, the tissue is incubated with primary antibodies that target histone modifications, followed by Protein A-fused Tn5-induced tagmentation. Both methods leverage a microfluidic device that delivers two sets of oligonucleotide barcodes to generate a two-dimensional mosaic of tissue pixels at near single-cell resolution. A spatial-ATAC-RNA-seq or spatial-CUT&Tag-RNA-seq library can be generated in 3-5 d, allowing researchers to simultaneously investigate the transcriptomic landscape and epigenomic landscape of an intact tissue section. This protocol is an extension of our previous spatially resolved epigenome sequencing protocol and provides opportunities in multimodal profiling.
细胞的表观基因组与基因转录紧密相关,而基因转录控制着细胞身份和多种生物学活动。空间技术的最新进展通过在保留空间信息的情况下分析转录组学或表观基因组学,增进了我们对组织异质性的理解,但主要局限于一次分析一个分子层面。在此,我们介绍两种空间分辨测序方法的流程,即空间ATAC-RNA测序和空间CUT&Tag-RNA测序,它们能够在全基因组范围内同时分析转录组和表观基因组。在这两种方法中,转录组读数都是通过组织固定、通透化和原位逆转录产生的。在空间ATAC-RNA测序中,Tn5转座酶用于探测可及染色质;在空间CUT&Tag-RNA测序中,组织先与靶向组蛋白修饰的一抗孵育,然后进行蛋白A融合的Tn5诱导的片段化。这两种方法都利用微流控装置输送两组寡核苷酸条形码,以近单细胞分辨率生成组织像素的二维镶嵌图。空间ATAC-RNA测序或空间CUT&Tag-RNA测序文库可在3至5天内生成,使研究人员能够同时研究完整组织切片的转录组景观和表观基因组景观。本方案是我们之前空间分辨表观基因组测序方案的扩展,为多模态分析提供了机会。
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