Optimised fluorescence-activated nuclei sorting for epigenomic analysis of cortical cell types

Abstract

Increased understanding of the functional complexity of the genome has led to growing recognition of the role of non-sequence-based regulatory variation in disorders of the human central nervous system. Most genomic analyses of the brain are limited by the use of bulk tissue, which comprises a heterogeneous mix of different neural cell types with distinct epigenetic profiles, thereby limiting the ability to attribute regulatory changes to specific cell populations. Given the limited availability of human post-mortem tissue resources and the importance of integrating multi-omic data from the same samples, there is a critical need for methods that enable parallel, cell-type-resolved genomic profiling. We present optimised protocols using fluorescence-activated nuclei sorting (FANS) to isolate nuclei from different human and mouse brain cell types for downstream multi-omic analysis. Our approach enables the robust purification of neuronal, oligodendrocyte, microglial and other glial-origin nuclei from both adult and fetal brain tissue. We demonstrate that FANS-isolated nuclei are compatible with a wide range of genomic assays, including profiling of DNA modifications, histone modifications, chromatin accessibility, and gene expression. This protocol maximises the utility of limited post-mortem tissue resources and provides a unified workflow for comprehensive, cell-type-specific interrogation of molecular mechanisms involved in the brain.