Benchmark of chromatin-protein interaction methods in haploid round spermatids

Chromatin-protein interactions are fundamental for the regulation of gene transcription. While ChIP-seq has long been the standard method for mapping these interactions, emerging techniques such as CUT&RUN and CUT&Tag, which offer advantages including low input requirements and high signal-to-noise ratios, have garnered attention. However, these enzyme-based tagmentation approaches may introduce potential biases, and comparative assessment with ChIP-seq remain absent. This study aims to systematically evaluate and compare the performance of ChIP-seq, CUT&Tag, and CUT&RUN for profiling genome-wide transcription factors and histone modifications binding. This study provides a comprehensive evaluation of ChIP-seq, CUT&Tag, and CUT&RUN for detecting active and repressive histone modifications as well as transcription factor binding. Our results show that all three methods reliably detect histone modifications and transcription factor enrichment, with CUT&Tag demonstrating a relatively higher signal-to-noise ratio. Rigorous peak comparison analysis identified differential enrichment sites detected by the three methods. Additionally, we observed a notable correlation between CUT&Tag signal intensity and chromatin accessibility, suggesting the potential for CUT&Tag to detect regions of active chromatin. Overall design: ATAC-seq, CUT&Tag and CUT&RUN of histone modification H3K4me3, H3K27me3 and CTCF in round spermatids.