Monitoring Epigenetic Changes in H3K27 Using Engineered Probes

Epigenetic modifications in H3K27, such as H3K27me3 and H3K27ac, are a vital set of epigenetic modifications. H3K27ac is enriched in super enhancers, which are a cluster of regulatory regions and can control the fate of a cell. H3K27me3 is a known mark of facultative heterochromatin, regions of chromosomes that are not always heterochromatic and play a significant role in the development of many living systems. It is thus important to track and quantify changes in H3K27 epigenetic modifications; however, there are no existing tools that can track dynamic changes in H3K27. Here, we have designed a set of recombinant probes that binds preferentially to the selected H3K27 modifications. The probes were compatible with live cells and were validated against antibodies using cell extracts and fixed cells. We will discuss several applications of our engineered probes in tracking dynamic changes in H3K27 in live cells.