100-200 μl frozen synchronized young adult worm pellets were used for each chromatin immnuoprecipitation experiment. Crushed pellets (pulverized by grinding in liquid nitrogen with a mortar and pestle) were resuspended in 1ml of pre-chilled RIPA buffer (1X PBS, 1% NP-40, 0.5% sodium deoxycholate, 0.1% SDS, and 1X HALT combined protease and phosphatase inhibitor cocktail [ThermoScientific]). To crosslink, formaldehyde was added to the crude extract to a final concentration of 2%. The lysate was rotated at 4°C for 10 minutes. 0.1 ml of 1M Tris-HCl (pH 7.5) was added to quench formaldehyde. Lysate was spun at 6000 x g for 30 second and the supernatant was removed. The pellet was resuspended in 0.5ml of pre-chilled RIPA buffer. The lysate was transferred to a 1.5 ml TPX tube (Diagenode) and sonicated (Bioruptor [Diagenode], output level: high, interval: 0.5, three times of 8-minute sonication). 50 μl of the lysate was used to make IP input library. For each immumoprecipiation experiment, 2 μg of anti-H3K9me3 (ab8898, Abcam) or anti-Pol II-S2 (ab5095, Abcam) was added to 400 μl of the lysate (containing approximately 50 μg DNA). The IP mix was rotated overnight at 4°C. 50 μl of Protein A Dynabeads (Life Technology) was added and rotated for another 2 hours. The beads were then washed three times with 800 μl ice-cold LiCl washing buffer (100 mM Tris-HCl, pH7.5, 500 mM LiCl, 1% NP-40 and 1% sodim deoxycholate). To elute the immunoprecipitation product and reverse crosslink, beads were incubated with 400 μl of worm lysis buffer (0.1 M Tris-HCl, pH 7.5, 100 mM NaCl, 50 mM EDTA, 1% SDS, and 200 μg/ml of proteinase K) at 65 °C for 2 hours with agitation every 30 minutes (IP input lysate was treated similarly to reverse crosslink) and then subject to organic extraction and precipitation of DNA and RNA. DNA libraries were prepared using KAPA Hyper Prep Kits (KAPA Biosystems) according to the manufacturer's instructions