loading . . . CAD-C: An engineered nuclease enables repair-free in situ proximity ligation and nucleosome-resolution chromosome walks in human cells Chromosome conformation capture (3C)-derived methods have become an indispensable tool in the study of gene regulation. The three-dimensional contacts they are able to assay depend strongly on the properties of the enzyme used to fragment chromatin prior to proximity-driven ligation. Micrococcal nuclease (MNase), used in Micro-C, increases resolution at the expense of low ligation efficiency and the need for extensive enzyme titration. To overcome these limitations, we engineered a highly active, TEV protease-activatable caspase-activated DNase (CAD) to enable an efficient, low-sequence-bias, and high-resolution proximity ligation assay we call CAD-C. CAD-C was successful on the first attempt for each human cell line tested and the resulting datasets capture loops, TADs, compartments, and stripes similarly to Micro-C. However, compared to Micro-C and Hi-C, CAD-C shows enhanced sensitivity for promoter-enhancer loops. Leveraging the ligation-competent DNA ends produced by CAD cleavage, we show that CAD-C is compatible with a highly streamlined, repair-free protocol and produces multi-step CADwalks, consecutive ligations between nucleosomal or sub-nucleosomal fragments. With these walks, we probe local chromatin fiber folding contacts, nucleosomal and sub-nucleosomal footprints, and long-range nuclear organization regimes in human cell lines. CAD-C is an efficient, robust chromatin structure assay that can span sub-nucleosomal to chromosomal length scales in a single experiment. ### Competing Interest Statement V.I.R. and J.S. are inventors on a related patent application covering CAD-C (PCT application filed 2024). NIH Common Fund, https://ror.org/001d55x84, 1DP2GM150021 Irma T. Hirschl Trust, https://ror.org/01yaqvf46, Career Scientist Award Rita Allen Foundation, https://ror.org/0515k5w36, Scholar Award Stavros Niarchos Foundation, https://ror.org/0210rze73, Institute for Global Infectious Disease Research at Rockefeller University Grant Robertson Technology Development Fund at Rockefeller University Boehringer Ingelheim (Germany), https://ror.org/00q32j219, PhD Fellowship to JS U.S. National Science Foundation, https://ror.org/021nxhr62, GRFP to LAW International Human Frontier Science Program Organization, https://ror.org/02ebx7v45, Postdoctoral Cross-Disciplinary Fellowship to AO Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Postgraduate fellowship to HC, Postgraduate fellowship to JLY https://doi.org/10.64898/2025.12.22.695891
