Epigenetic Memory of Mouse Intestinal Inflammation

Abstract

The gut, encompassing one of the largest epithelial surfaces in the body, interacts with both biological and non-biological agents that can cause regular injury. Fortunately, the small intestinal epithelium has a remarkable capacity to repair itself after severe injury, due to the abundance of highly replicative stem cells housed in the intestinal crypt regions. Much remains to be understood about the activation processes of the repair mechanisms and to what extent the stem cells themselves can adapt to certain forms of damage, including molecular mechanisms related to gene regulation. Here, I show that in response to acute inflammation, chromatin in intestinal stem cells has increased accessibility around specific loci and that this state is maintained in some regions even after the epithelium has recovered from damage, suggesting the possibility of memory. Such epigenetic memory may confer some adaptive resiliency to subsequent damage.