Chromatin Immunoprecipitation (ChIP) is an important procedure that allows you to verify if a certain protein is physically located at a regulatory region. This information, taken together with other procedures such as luciferase assays and EMSAs, will give definitive proof that the query protein is involved in the transcription of a protein. This procedure for p65 ChIP can be adapted to investigate other proteins; just a change of the antibody will suffice.

The transcription factor known as NF-κB is a homo- or hetero-dimer consisting of members of the Rel/NFKB family. The most abundant NF-κB complexes are made of two different proteins, p65 (Rel-A) and p50 (NFKB1). The NF-κB complex is initially inhibited by IκB by direct binding, thus trapping NF-κB in the cytoplasm. After a stimulatory signal, IκB kinase (IKK) phosphorylates IκB, allowing IκB to undergo proteasome-mediated degradation. The degradation of IκB and phosphorylation of p65 by multiple kinases activates NF-κB, allowing it to transport to the nucleus and cause the transcriptional activation of many of its target genes containing κB sites (consensus sequence: gggRNNYYcc, R = purine Y = pyrimidine), such as PUMA, IL-6, and TNF.

P65 (P65)

NFkB (NFκ)

ChIP (炸薯条)

Promoter (发起人)