Genome-wide analysis of histone modifications during neutrophilic granulopoiesis following ELF-MF exposure

To address whether ELF-MF influences the epigenetic landscape in differentiating haematopoietic cells, we performed an in vitro haematopoietic differentiation under powerline-simulating ELF-MF exposure (50 Hz, 1 mT, 5’ on/10’ off) in comparison to sham exposure (50 Hz, 7 µT, 5’ on/10’ off) or no exposure. We differentiated CD34+ cells (allcells, CB008F, lot: CBC121009M) isolated from human cord blood into the neutrophilic lineage, and performed ChIP combined with next generation sequencing for the histone modifications H3K4me2 and H3K27me3 before (t0) and after 5 days (t5) of differentiation. Genome-wide profiling of active and repressive histone modifications did not reveal significant alterations. However, ELF MF exposure has an influence on the robustness of the epigenetic landscape during global chromatin programming of granulopoiesis. Our data suggests that ELF MF has a stochastic effect on the epigenetic landscape of individual cells.