A new technology allows scientists to map, in single cells, the DNA binding sites of transcription factors and other regulatory proteins that control gene activity, according to a study led by investigators at Weill Cornell Medicine and the New York Genome Center. With key advantages over methods currently in use, the technology is expected to be a powerful addition to biologists’ toolkit for studying cells in health and disease.
“D&D-seq,” as the new method is called, uses antibodies to bring a DNA-editing enzyme close to a target protein, allowing researchers to record where that protein interacts with DNA. The study describing the technique, published June 4 in Cell, showed that it surmounts key technical drawbacks of current methods for mapping protein-DNA interactions, and is the first of its kind that can be easily incorporated into high-throughput, single-cell “multi-omics” workflows.
