Polyvinyl alcohol/gelatin hydrogels regulate cell adhesion and chromatin accessibility

Cell adhesion is known to heavily influence cell migration and wound healing. A number of cell adhesion molecules and their roles has been extensively studied. However, the changes of global chromatin accessibility and gene expressions correlated with cell adhesion is still unclear. Here we prepared a series of PVA/Gelatin hydrogels to handily regulate cell adhesion by adjusting gelatin concentration and found that cell adhesion area and the ratio of non-circular cells were increased with the increasement of gelatin concentration while cell circularity was decreased. Our results showed that widespread chromatin accessibility was increased with increasing expression level of histone deacetylase 11 (Hdc11) under poor cell adhesion. Meanwhile, one branch of MAPK pathway - ERK 1/2 which involved in mechanotransduction signaling was also found in the enrichment analysis of downregulated genes. This work provided a handy method to regulate cell adhesion and these findings deepen our understanding of the cell adhesion process and its associated chromatin accessibility. Inverstigation the difference of chromatin accessbility and RNA expression in NIH3T3 cells under different adhesion condition