Lineage-specific rearrangement of chromatin loops and epigenomic features during adipocytes and osteoblasts commitment

Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) can be differentiated into adipocytes and osteoblasts. The processes are driven by the rewiring of chromatin architectures and transcriptomic/epigenomic changes. Here, we induced hMSCs to adipogenic and osteogenic differentiation, and performed 2 kb resolution Hi-C experiments for chromatin loops detection. We also generated matched RNA-seq, ChIP-seq and ATAC-seq data for integrative analysis. After comprehensively comparing adipogenesis and osteogenesis, we quantitatively identified lineage-specific loops and screened out lineage-specific enhancers and open chromatin. We reveal that lineage-specific loops can activate gene expression and facilitate cell commitment through combining enhancers and accessible chromatin in a lineage-specific manner. We finally proposed loop-mediated regulatory networks and identified the controlling factors for adipocytes and osteoblasts determination. Functional experiments validated the lineage-specific regulation networks towards IRS2 and RUNX2 that are associated with adipogenesis and osteogenesis, respectively. These results are expected to help better understand the chromatin conformation determinants of hMSCs fate commitment.