Generating a Consistent Framework for Evaluating Cell Response to External Stimuli through Epigenetic Assessors

Mesenchymal stem cells are more and more widely used in tissue engineering due to their pluripotency and no relative ethical problems. Traditional characterization techniques to detect mesenchymal stem cell states include flow cytometry, gene expressing profiling and immunohistochemistry. However, these methods can only provide transient and low level information from current RNA or protein levels about mesenchymal stem cells, which may cause problems when predicting the possible downstream lineages they will commit into.

We have developed chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP)-based epigenetic technique to detect mesenchymal stem cell states. For the systems we tested, this epigenetic assessor successfully characterized cell state changes and gave similar results obtained from gene expression profiling or protein expression assay. This epigenetic technique can provide information about mesenchymal stem cells states from a more fundamental chromatin level, which is promising for predicting future lineages from current states.