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Sugarcoating Polycomb repression
1Department of Biochemistry, Erasmus University Medical Center, P.O. Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, the Netherlands.
Abstract:
The addition of the monosaccharide O-GlcNAc is one of the most mysterious posttranslational modifications. In this issue of Developmental Cell, Gambetta and Müller (2014) show that O-GlcNAcylation of the Drosophila Polycomb group (PcG) protein Polyhomeotic (PH) is essential for homeotic gene silencing. O-GlcNAcylation counteracts nonproductive aggregation of PH, allowing transcriptional repression.
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