Automated mapping of DNA replication fork progression in human cells with ForkML

Abstract

Abstract Current approaches to mapping fork progression in the human genome suffer from drastically low throughput. Here, we introduce ForkML, a nanopore sequencing-based method automatically positioning thousands of individual fork velocities by tracking BrdU incorporation into replicating DNA after double pulse-labelling of asynchronous cells. ForkML recovers known human fork speed, accurately detects replication stress, and, crucially, connects replication dynamics to genomic and chromatin contexts, exposing fork slowdown in early-replicating transcribed regions.