Extensive effort is under way to survey the epigenomic landscape of primary ex vivo tissues to establish normal reference data and to discern variation associated with disease. The low abundance of some tissue types and the isolation procedure required to generate a homogenous cell population often yield a small quantity of cells for examination. This difficulty is further compounded by the need to profile a myriad of epigenetic marks. Thus, technologies that permit both ultralow input and high throughput are desired. We demonstrate a simple microfluidic technology, SurfaceChIP-seq, for profiling genome-wide histone modifications using as few as 30 to 100 cells per assay and with up to eight assays running in parallel. We applied the technology to profile epigenomes using nuclei isolated from prefrontal cortex and cerebellum of mouse brain. Our cell type-specific data revealed that neuronal and glial fractions exhibited profound epigenomic differences across the two functionally distinct brain regions.

中文翻译：

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低输入和多重微流分析显示小脑和前额叶皮层的表观基因组变异。

目前正在进行广泛的努力以调查主要离体组织的表观基因组情况，以建立正常的参考数据并辨别与疾病相关的变异。一些组织类型的低丰度和生成同质细胞群所需的分离程序通常会产生少量用于检查的细胞。由于需要对大量的表观遗传标记进行轮廓分析，使得这一困难更加复杂。因此，需要既允许超低输入又允许高吞吐量的技术。我们展示了一种简单的微流控技术SurfaceChIP-seq，可用于分析全基因组范围内的组蛋白修饰，每个分析中使用少至30至100个细胞，最多可并行进行八个分析。我们使用从鼠前额叶皮层和小脑分离出的核将技术应用于表观基因组。