21:T489,Homogeneous populations of mature differentiated primary cell types can display variable responsiveness to extracellular stimuli, although little is known about the underlying mechanisms that govern such heterogeneity at the level of gene expression. In this article, we show that morphologically homogenous human endothelial cells exhibit heterogeneous expression of VCAM1 after TNF-α stimulation. Variability in VCAM1 expression was not due to stochasticity of intracellular signal transduction but rather to preexisting established heterogeneous states of promoter DNA methylation that were generationally conserved through mitosis. Variability in DNA methylation of the VCAM1 promoter resulted in graded RelA/p65 and RNA polymerase II binding that gave rise to a distribution of VCAM1 transcription in the population after TNF-α stimulation. Microarray analysis and single-cell RNA sequencing revealed that a number of cytokine-inducible genes shared this heterogeneous response pattern. These results show that heritable epigenetic heterogeneity is fundamental in inflammatory signaling and highlight VCAM1 as a metastable epiallele.22:T472,Marsupials exhibit distinctive modes of reproduction and early development that set them apart from their eutherian counterparts and render them invaluable for comparative studies. However, marsupial genomic resources still lag far behind those of eutherian mammals. We present a series of novel genomic resources for the fat-tailed dunnart (Sminthopsis crassicaudata), a mouse-like marsupial that, due to its ease of husbandry and ex-utero development, is emerging as a laboratory model. We constructed a highly representative multi-tissue de novo transcriptome assembly of dunnart RNA-seq reads spanning 12 tissues. The transcriptome includes 2,093,982 assembled transcripts and has a mammalian transcriptome BUSCO completeness score of 93.3%, the highest amongst currently published marsupial transcriptomes. This global transcriptome, along with ab initio predictions, supported annotation of the existing dunnart genome, revealing 21,622 protein-coding genes. Altogether, these resources will enable wider use of the dunnart as a model marsupial and deepen our understanding of mammalian genome evolution.

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