J Steroid Biochem Mol Biol. 2004 May;89-90(1-5):277-9.

Using chromatin immunoprecipitation to monitor 1alpha,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3-dependent chromatin activity on the human CYP24 promoter.

Väisänen S¹, Dunlop TW, Frank C, Carlberg C.

Author information

1: Department of Biochemistry, University of Kuopio, P.O. Box 1627, FIN-70211 Kuopio, Finland. vaisanen@messi.uku.fi

Abstract

We applied the chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) method for the analysis of 1alpha,25-dihydroxyvitamin D(3) (1,25-D(3))-dependent chromatin activity on the human 24-hydroxylase (CYP24) promoter in MCF-7 human breast cancer cells. In this pilot study we concentrated on the proximal promoter (+22 to -424) of the CYP24 gene, which includes the known 1,25-D(3) response element (VDRE) cluster. A constitutively active region of the human histone 4a gene (-40 to +285) served for normalization. Chromatin activity snapshots were taken 0, 30, 60, 120, 180, 240 and 300 min after the onset of stimulation with 1,25-D(3) and anti-acetylated histone 4 antibodies were used for ChIP. Our results suggest that ChIP is suitable for monitoring 1,25-D(3)-dependent changes of chromatin organization and can be used to reveal information about chromatin activity in living cells.