@article{Foulk01052015, author = {Foulk, Michael S. and Urban, John M. and Casella, Cinzia and Gerbi, Susan A.}, title = {Characterizing and controlling intrinsic biases of lambda exonuclease in nascent strand sequencing reveals phasing between nucleosomes and G-quadruplex motifs around a subset of human replication origins}, volume = {25}, number = {5}, pages = {725-735}, year = {2015}, doi = {10.1101/gr.183848.114}, abstract ={Nascent strand sequencing (NS-seq) is used to discover DNA replication origins genome-wide, allowing identification of features for their specification. NS-seq depends on the ability of lambda exonuclease (λ-exo) to efficiently digest parental DNA while leaving RNA-primer protected nascent strands intact. We used genomics and biochemical approaches to determine if λ-exo digests all parental DNA sequences equally. We report that λ-exo does not efficiently digest G-quadruplex (G4) structures in a plasmid. Moreover, λ-exo digestion of nonreplicating genomic DNA (LexoG0) enriches GC-rich DNA and G4 motifs genome-wide. We used LexoG0 data to control for nascent strand–independent λ-exo biases in NS-seq and validated this approach at the rDNA locus. The λ-exo–controlled NS-seq peaks are not GC-rich, and only 35.5% overlap with 6.8% of all G4s, suggesting that G4s are not general determinants for origin specification but may play a role for a subset. Interestingly, we observed a periodic spacing of G4 motifs and nucleosomes around the peak summits, suggesting that G4s may position nucleosomes at this subset of origins. Finally, we demonstrate that use of Na+ instead of K+ in the λ-exo digestion buffer reduced the effect of G4s on λ-exo digestion and discuss ways to increase both the sensitivity and specificity of NS-seq.}, URL = {http://genome.cshlp.org/content/25/5/725.abstract}, eprint = {http://genome.cshlp.org/content/25/5/725.full.pdf+html}, journal = {Genome Research} }