| description |
DNA synthesis is a fundamental requirement for cell proliferation and DNA repair, but no tools exist to identify the location, direction and speed of replication forks with base pair resolution. Mammalian cells have the ability to incorporate thymidine analogs along with the natural A, T, G and C bases during DNA synthesis, which allows for labelling of replicating or repaired DNA. The Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) MinION infers nucleotide identity from changes in the ionic current as DNA strands are pulled through nanopores and can differentiate noncanonical nucleotides from natural ones. Here, we demonstrate the use of the ONT MinION to detect 11 different thymidine analogs including CldU, BrdU, IdU, as well as, EdU alone or coupled to Biotin and other bulky adducts in synthetic DNA templates. We also show detection of IdU label, incorporated during DNA replication in the genome of mouse pluripotent stem cells. We find that different modifications generate variable shifts in signals, providing a method of using analog combinations to identify the location and direction of DNA synthesis and repair at high resolution. We conclude that this novel method has the potential for single-base, genome-wide examination of DNA replication in stem cell differentiation or cell transformation. |