Alu repeats blocking and CEBPA overexpression in BLaER1 cells, CEBPA ChIP-Seq

Weaker CEBPA binding in the human than in the mouse genome is a general trait of the human genome across multiple biological conditions. Alu repeats carry strong CEBPA binding motifs, which compete with regulatory regions for CEBPA binding. To directly test this hypothesis, we attempted to overcome Alu competition by using, first, a CRISPR-dCas9 system in BLaER1 cells (Rapino et al. 2013). By promoting the recruitment of the inactive Cas9 to Alu regions with specific gRNAs targeting Alu repeats containing strong CEBPA motifs we protected them, hampering CEBPA binding to these regions. We tested the effect of two different paired gRNA constructs in two replicates and one control paired gRNA in two replicates. Second, we also further overexpressed CEBPA in human BLaER1 cells to overcome Alu competition. We tested two doses of CEBPA overexpression in two replicates and one control experiment in two replicates.