Chirality Regulates Macrophage Polarization for Tissue Regeneration Through Bidirectionally Modulating WTAP‐Mediated m6A Modification

Abstract

Chirality, a fundamental design feature at all levels of life organization, has shown great capability in guiding cell‐fate determination and tissue regeneration. Chirality‐directed differentiation programs involve remarkable changes in transcriptional networks, yet whether epigenetic regulatory events are also required is less well understood. Herein, by combining high‐throughput m6A MeRIP sequencing, RIP‐qPCR, and gene modulation techniques, it is demonstrated that biomimetic chiral nanofibrils can bidirectionally regulate wilms tumor 1 associated protein (WTAP)‐mediated m6A RNA methylation to guide macrophages polarization for tissue regeneration. The biomimic chiral nanofibril hydrogels are fabricated using a self‐assembly approach based on C2‐symmetric phenylalanine derivatives. In vitro and in vivo studies indicated that the L‐nanofibrils exhibit a greater propensity to promote M2‐macrophage polarization than D‐nanofibrils, thereby favoring osteogenesis. Then, m6A‐MeRIP sequencing revealed a unique chirality‐dependent m6A methylation level in macrophages, which was gated by a competitive pair of CCM3‐FAK through enantioselectively integrin recognition. L‐nanofibrils considerably suppressed WTAP‐mediated m6A methylation by promoting Itgα3‐FAK expression and paxillin‐driven mechanotransduction, whereas D‐nanofibrils induced WTAP‐mediated m6A methylation by favoring ItgαV‐CCM3 expression and suppressing mechanotransduction. Furthermore, the gain‐of‐function and loss‐of‐function experiments and RIP‐qPCR demonstrate that the WTAP expression could direct macrophage polarization via manipulating the functional molecule B7‐H3 (CD276). Thus, a mechano‐epigenetic mechanism of chirality‐mediated cell‐fate determination is unveiled, which holds remarkable promise in the realm of assisted regenerative material design.