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Table 4 Advantages and disadvantages of ChIP techniques

From: DNA–protein interaction studies: a historical and comparative analysis

Technique [References] Technique Applications Case studies
Pros Cons
ChIP [42] In vivo method
Enables observation of highly dynamic events
Requires a population of cells
Cannot directly indicate functional significance
Predict the location of a bound protein in a particular cell type Liu et al. [46]
ChIP-chip [42, 80] High throughput
Enables to calculate the relative binding affinity of the protein under study to each sequence
Hybridisation noise signals from biased amplification
Difficulties in comparing results from different groups
Detect the presence of a specific protein throughout a large portion of the genome
ChIP-SAGE [80] The results obtained are measured more quantitatively It suffers from mapping ambiguity Predict the location of a specific protein throughout a large portion or the entire genome
ChIP-PET [80] The results obtained are measured more quantitatively
Improves the mapping accuracy of short-tags and the information content
Demands a large sequencing capacity
ChIP-seq [75, 80, 83] Inexistence of hybridisation noise signals
Obtention of rigorous and quantifiable results
Insufficient reads can lead to a loss of sensitivity and specificity in spotting the enriched regions
High cost
ChIP-exo [75] Enables observation of highly dynamic events   Predict the location of more than one bound protein in a particular cell type