Methylated DNA Immunoprecipitation (MeDIP) from Low Amounts of Cells

Methylated DNA immunoprecipitation (MeDIP) is an immunocapturing approach for unbiased enrichment of DNA that is methylated on cytosines. The principle is that genomic DNA is randomly sheared by sonication and immunoprecipitated with an antibody that specifically recognizes 5-methylcytidine (5mC), which can be combined with PCR or high-throughput analysis (microarrays, deep sequencing). The MeDIP technique has been originally used to generate DNA methylation profiles on a genome scale in mammals and plants. Here we provide an optimized version of the MeDIP protocol suitable for low amounts of DNA, which can be used to study DNA methylation in cellular populations available in small quantities.