Innate immune cells have complex signalling pathways for sensing pathogens and initiating innate immune responses against infection. These pathways are tightly regulated at different levels, including by epigenetic regulators. In this Review, we discuss studies revealing the epigenetic mechanisms, as well as the post-transcriptional and post-translational modifications by chromatin modifiers, that underlie the establishment of these signalling networks and the rapid induction of innate immune molecules during infection. We also discuss how pathogens use their own products, as well as host components, to target host epigenomes for immune evasion and survival. We describe the crosstalk between epigenetic regulators and new modulators, such as inflammation-specific metabolites, and how we might deconstruct dynamic chromatin patterns and identify critical chromatin modifiers of host–pathogen interactions.

先天免疫细胞具有复杂的信号通路，用于感知病原体并启动针对感染的先天免疫反应。这些途径在不同水平上受到严格调控，包括表观遗传调控因子。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了揭示表观遗传机制的研究，以及染色质修饰剂的转录后和翻译后修饰，这些是这些信号网络建立和感染期间先天免疫分子快速诱导的基础。我们还讨论了病原体如何使用它们自己的产品以及宿主成分来靶向宿主表观基因组以进行免疫逃避和生存。我们描述了表观遗传调节剂和新调节剂之间的串扰，例如炎症特异性代谢物，