Should I be concerned that my Concanavalin A beads "clump together" in some of my CUT&Tag experiments?

Concanavalin A beads can clump together rather easily, especially when cells become lysed. Make sure your cells are healthy and be sure to treat them very gently during the cell wash. We also recommend limiting the room temperature incubation time of the cell suspension with Concanavalin A beads to 5 minutes. Resting the tubes at the appropriate incubation temperatures in lieu of rotating or rocking the tubes during the incubations for cell-bead binding, antibody binding, and pAG-Tn5 enzyme binding helps to mitigate bead clumping and does not have any adverse effects on sequencing depth, identified peak numbers, or binding patterns.

With all that being said, our internal testing has shown that bead clumping does not negatively affect the final results of CUT&Tag experiments.

Last updated: April 17, 2024