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Abstract Chromosomal instability and changes in the epigenome are defining features in most metastatic cancers. Our research links chromosomal missegregation, their containment in micronuclei, and subsequent rupture of the micronuclear envelope to histone post-translational modification aberrations. This relationship was across all tested human and murine cancer cell lines, as well as non-transformed cells. Furthermore, we discovered that the observed changes in histone PTMs were caused by either micronuclear rupture or the persistence of histone PTM status during cell division. Moreover, we revealed substantial chromatin accessibility differences in micronuclei. Notably, there is a distinct bias in chromatin accessibility between promoter regions compared to distal and intergenic regions of the genome, which aligned well with observed changes in histone modifications. The induction of chromosomal instability leads to widespread, heterogeneous, and heritable abnormalities in the epigenetic landscape of cancer cells. Therefore, on top of genomic copy number changes, chromosomal instability causes epigenetic reprogramming, which adds another layer to cancer heterogeneity. Citation Format: Albert S. Agustinus, Duaa Al-Rawi, Bhargavi Dameracharla, Ramya Raviram, Bailey S. Jones, Stephanie Stransky, Lorenzo Scipioni, Jens Luebeck, Melody Di Bona, Danguole Norkunaite, Robert M. Myers, Mercedes Duran, Seongmin Choi, Britta Weigelt, Shira Yomtoubian, Andrew McPherson, Eleonore Toufektchan, Kristina Keuper, Paul S. Mischel, Vivek Mittal, Sohrab P. Shah, John Maciejowski, Zuzana Storchova, Enrico Gratton, Peter Ly, Dan Landau, Mathieu F. Bakhoum, Richard P. Koche, Simone Sidoli, Vineet Bafna, Yael David, Samuel F. Bakhoum. Chromosomal instability causes epigenetic aberrations in cancer abstract. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2024; Part 1 (Regular Abstracts) ; 2024 Apr 5-10; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84 (6Suppl): Abstract nr 4293.
Agustinus et al. (Fri,) studied this question.