Genome-wide analysis of SOX2 binding in asynchronous and mitotic mouse embryonic stem cells.

SOX2 is part of the core network of transcription factors regulating embryonic stem cell pluripotency. We found that SOX2 has the ability to remain bound to mitotic chromosomes, in contrast to most transcription factors that are excluded from mitotic chromatin as transcription shuts down. We obtained a highly purified population of mitotic mouse embryonic stem cells and compared the genome-wide binding profile of SOX2 to that in asynchronous cells by Chromatin Immunoprecipitation followed by high throughput sequencing (ChIP-seq), and show that SOX2 remains bound to a small set of genes during mitosis.