RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Reducing mitochondrial reads in ATAC-seq using CRISPR/Cas9 JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 087890 DO 10.1101/087890 A1 Lindsey Montefiori A1 Liana Gonzales A1 Zijie Zhang A1 Yoav Gilad A1 Carole Ober A1 Gregory Crawford A1 Marcelo Nobrega A1 Noboru Jo Sakabe YR 2016 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/11/22/087890.abstract AB ATAC-seq is a high-throughput sequencing technique that aims at identifying DNA sequences located in open chromatin. Depending on the cell type, ATAC-seq may yield a high number of mitochondrial sequencing reads (∽20-80% of the reads). As the regions of open chromatin of interest are usually located in the nuclear genome, mitochondrial reads are typically discarded from the analysis. To decrease wasted sequencing, we performed targeted cleavage of mitochondrial DNA using CRISPR/Cas9 and 100 mtDNA-specific guide RNAs. We also tested a modified ATAC-seq protocol that does not include detergent in the cell lysis buffer. Both treatments resulted in considerable reduction of mitochondrial reads (1.7 and 3-fold, respectively). The removal of detergent, however, resulted in increased background and fewer peaks identified. The highest number of peaks and highest quality data was obtained by preparing samples with the original ATAC-seq protocol (using detergent) and treating them with anti-mitochondrial guide RNAs and Cas9. This strategy could lead to considerable cost reduction and improved peak calling when performing ATAC-seq on a moderate to large number of samples and in cell types that contain a large amount of mitochondria.