RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 A simple and effective method to isolate germ nuclei from C. elegans for genomic assays JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 371351 DO 10.1101/371351 A1 Mei Han A1 Guifeng Wei A1 Catherine E. McManus A1 Valerie Reinke YR 2018 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/07/17/371351.abstract AB The wide variety of specialized permissive and repressive mechanisms by which germ cells regulate developmental gene expression are not well understood genome-wide. Isolation of germ cells with high integrity and purity from living animals is necessary to address these open questions, but no straightforward methods are currently available. Here we present an experimental paradigm that permits the isolation of the nuclei from C. elegans germ cells at quantities sufficient for genomic analyses. We demonstrate that these nuclei represent a very pure population and are suitable for both chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP-seq) and transcriptome (RNA-seq) analyses. The method does not require specialized transgenic strains or growth conditions and can be readily adopted by other researchers with minimal troubleshooting. This new capacity removes a major barrier in the field to dissect gene expression mechanisms in the germ line of C. elegans. Consequent discoveries using this technology will be relevant to conserved regulatory mechanisms across species.