SummaryInnate immune memory is the phenomenon whereby innate immune cells such as monocytes or macrophages undergo functional reprogramming after exposure to microbial components such as lipopolysaccharide (LPS). We apply an integrated epigenomic approach to characterize the molecular events involved in LPS-induced tolerance in a time-dependent manner. Mechanistically, LPS-treated monocytes fail to accumulate active histone marks at promoter and enhancers of genes in the lipid metabolism and phagocytic pathways. Transcriptional inactivity in response to a second LPS exposure in tolerized macrophages is accompanied by failure to deposit active histone marks at promoters of tolerized genes. In contrast, β-glucan partially reverses the LPS-induced tolerance in vitro. Importantly, ex vivo β-glucan treatment of monocytes from volunteers with experimental endotoxemia re-instates their capacity for cytokine production. Tolerance is reversed at the level of distal element histone modification and transcriptional reactivation of otherwise unresponsive genes.

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Serum-to-2i interconversion of mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs) is a valuable in vitro model for early embryonic development. To assess whether 3D chromatin organization changes during this transition, we established Capture Hi-C with target-sequence enrichment of DNase I hypersensitive sites. We detected extremely long-range intra- and inter-chromosomal interactions between a small subset of H3K27me3 marked bivalent promoters involving the Hox clusters in serum-grown cells. Notably, these promoter-mediated interactions are not present in 2i ground-state pluripotent mESCs but appear upon their further development into primed-like serum mESCs. Reverting serum mESCs to ground-state 2i mESCs removes these promoter-promoter interactions in a spatiotemporal manner. H3K27me3, which is largely absent at bivalent promoters in ground-state 2i mESCs, is necessary, but not sufficient, to establish these interactions, as confirmed by Capture Hi-C on Eed(-/-) serum mESCs. Our results implicate H3K27me3 and PRC2 as critical players in chromatin alteration during priming of ESCs for differentiation.

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