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DNA adenine methyltransferase identification (DamID) 1,2 is a method to detect protein-DNA interactions in vivo and is an alternative approach to chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) 3. It uses a relatively low amount of cells and does not require chemical cross-linking of protein with DNA or a highly specific antibody. The latter is particularly helpful when the target protein is loosely or indirectly associated with DNA. DamID has been successfully used to map the binding sites of a variety of proteins including nuclear envelope proteins 4-10, chromatin associated proteins 11-13, chromatin modifying enzymes 14, transcription factors and co-factors15-18 and RNAi machineries 19. The method is applicable in multiple organisms including S. cerevisiae 13, S. pombe 7, C. elegans 9,17, D. melanogaster 5,11,18,20, A. thaliana 21,22 as well as mouse and human cell lines 6,8,10,23,24.
The development of the DamID assay was based on the specific detection of adenine-methylated DNA fragments in eukaryotic cells that lack endogenous adenine methylation 2. An expressed fusion protein, consisting of the DNA-binding protein of interest and E. coli DNA adenine methyltransferase (Dam), can methylate the adenine base in GATC sequences that are in spatial proximity (most significantly within 1 kb and up to roughly 5 kb) to the binding sites of the protein in the genome 2. The modified DNA fragments can be specifically amplified and hybridized to microarrays to detect the genomic binding sites of the protein of interest 1,25,26. This original DamID method was limited by the availability of microarrays and the density of predetermined probes. We have therefore integrated high throughput sequencing into DamID 10 and designated the method as DamID-seq. The large number of short reads generated from DamID-seq enables precise localization of protein-DNA interactions genome-wide. We found that DamID-seq provided a higher resolution and a wider dynamic range than DamID by microarray for studying genome-nuclear lamina (NL) associations 10. This improved method allows probing NL associations within gene structures 10 and facilitates comparisons with other high throughput sequencing data, such as ChIP-seq and RNA-seq.
The DamID-seq protocol described here was initially developed for mapping genome-NL associations 10. We generated a fusion protein by tethering mouse or human Lamin B1 to E. coli DNA adenine methyltransferase and tested the protocol in 3T3 mouse embryonic fibroblasts, C2C12 mouse myoblasts 10 and IMR90 human fetal lung fibroblasts (data not published). In this protocol, we start with constructing vectors and expressing Dam-tethered fusion proteins by lentiviral infection in mammalian cells 24. Next, we describe the detailed protocols of amplifying adenine-methylated DNA fragments and preparing sequencing libraries that should be applicable in other organisms.