Genome-wide loss of chromatin accessibility coexists with selectively elevated RNA abundance in nutrient-starved U2OS cells

Genome-wide ATAC-seq accessibility drops after 18 h severe nutrient deprivation in U2OS cells, while only a minority of expressed genes show altered RNA abundance.

• Why it matters: This addresses how to interpret epigenomic accessibility data during acute metabolic stress, when the link between regulatory potential and transcript output may be hard to infer.
• What they did: The study integrated ATAC-seq and RNA-seq in U2OS cells under starvation, quantified accessibility and relative steady-state RNA changes, and used exon–intron and metabolic nascent RNA labeling at selected loci.
• The result: Accessibility and RNA abundance changes were only modestly correlated (promoters Pearson r = 0.25; enhancers r = 0.10) and explained ~6% of variance, yet adaptive programmes showed increased RNA production despite reduced accessibility.

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