Fig. 3
From: Critical illness-induced bone loss is related to deficient autophagy and histone hypomethylation
Aberrant epigenetic modifications are linked to alterations in the autophagy pathway in critically ill patient osteoclasts. (a) Global histone methylation at histone H3 methylated Lys9 (H3K9) and histone H3 methylated Lys27 (H3K27) was decreased in freshly isolated PBMCs and mature osteoclasts from critically ill patients compared to healthy controls, whilst levels of unmethylated histone H3 were unchanged. (b) Using the Ingenuity Pathway Analysis site, a number of down-regulated chromatin modification enzymes (namely DOT1L, RPS6KA5, MLL, KAT2A, SUV39H1, HDAC1, and HDAC7) could be linked to up-regulated genes related to inhibition of autophagy (HTT and BC2L1), suggesting that histone hypomethylation may be associated with deficient autophagy in critically ill patient osteoclasts (red network hubs = autophagy-related genes; blue network hubs = chromatin modification-related genes)