High-throughput single-cell chromatin accessibility CRISPR screens enable unbiased identification of regulatory networks in cancer

Spear-ATAC is a modified droplet-based single-cell ATAC-seq (scATAC-seq) protocol that enables simultaneous read-out of chromatin accessibility profiles and integrated sgRNA spacer sequences from thousands of individual cells at a time. Spear-ATAC profiling of 104,592 cells representing 414 sgRNA knock-down populations revealed the temporal dynamics of epigenetic responses to regulatory perturbations in cancer cells and the associations between transcription factor binding profiles, demonstrating a high-throughput method for perturbing and evaluating dynamic single-cell epigenetic states.