H4K16ac and RNAPol2 CUT&Tag of Drosophila Melanogaster and Bacillus Grandii

This experiment was designed to investigate the epigenetic basis of sex chromosome dosage compensation. Such mechanisms often operate through epigenetic modifications, including histone modifications, which alter chromatin structure and gene expression. In Drosophila melanogaster, dosage compensation is achieved by upregulating the single X chromosome in males through acetylation of histone H4 at lysine 16 (H4K16ac). We therefore used D. melanogaster as a positive control to validate our approach. In contrast, the mechanism of dosage compensation in Bacillus grandii remains unknown. By profiling H4K16ac in this species, we aim to test whether this histone modification may have been convergently recruited to mediate dosage compensation. Overall design: For D. melanogaster, CUT&Tag targeting H4K16ac was performed using five heads per sample for both males and females. For B. grandii, a single head per individual was used for each sample. In B.grandii, we profiled H4K16ac together with RNA polymerase II. Remark: In absence of an appropriate reference genome of Bacillus grandii we used NCBI genome assembly Brsri_v3 of Bacillus rossius redtenbacheri (GCF_032445375.1) as reference genome instead.