Plant Chromatin Immunoprecipitation

Development of multicellular organisms is based on specialized gene expression programs. Because chromatin establishes the environment for transcription, understanding composition and dynamics of chromatin is an important part of developmental biology. The knowledge about chromatin has been greatly advanced by the chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) technique, because ChIP allows to map the position of proteins as well as modifications of DNA and histones to specific genomic regions. Although ChIP has been applied to a wide range of model organisms, including Arabidopsis, it remains a challenging technique, and a careful experimental setup including appropriate positive and negative controls are required to obtain reliable results. Here, we describe a ChIP protocol adapted for material from Arabidopsis, which we routinely apply in our laboratory, and we discuss required controls and methods for data analysis.