Molecular profiling of Ctcf hemizygous mouse embryonic fibroblasts: RNA-seq

CTCF is a highly conserved and ubiquitously expressed protein involved in several fundamental processes such as fine-tuning gene expression, imprinting, X-chromosome inactivation and 3D chromatin organisation. To understand the impact of differences in the concentration of CTCF abundance on these processes, we exploit a CTCF hemizygous mouse model with a stable reduction in the concentration of this protein. We derived twelve independent primary lines of mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) from six wildtype and six CTCF-hemizygous mouse E13.5 embryos. Total RNA from each MEF line was purified using QIAzol Lysis Reagent (Qiagen); DNase treatment and removal was performed using the TURBO DNA-freeTM Kit (Ambion, Life Technologies). Libraries were prepared using the TruSeq Stranded Total RNA Library Prep Kit with Ribo-Zero Gold (Illumina) and sequenced in an Illumna HiSeq4000 to produce 150bp paired-end reads. On the same MEF lines we have performed ChIPseq for CTCF, H3K4me3 and H3K27ac and HiC.