NEAT-seq – simultaneous profiling of intra-nuclear proteins, chromatin accessibility and gene expression in single cells

Stanford University School of Medicine researchers have developed NEAT-seq (sequencing of nuclear protein epitope abundance, chromatin accessibility and the transcriptome in single cells), enabling interrogation of regulatory mechanisms spanning the central dogma. The researchers apply this technique to profile CD4 memory T cells using a panel of master transcription factors (TFs) that drive T cell subsets and identify examples of TFs with regulatory activity gated by transcription, translation and regulation of chromatin binding. They also link a noncoding genome-wide association study single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) within a GATA motif to a putative target gene, using NEAT-seq data to internally validate SNP impact on GATA3 regulation.

Schematic of NEAT-seq workflow