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Breast cancer

EMSY forges a link

Nature Reviews Cancer volume 4, page 7 (2004)Cite this article

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EMSY was identified in a yeast two-hybrid screen with the amino terminus of BRCA2 and the interaction was confirmed using purified proteins. The activities of BRCA2 include transcriptional activation, DNA repair and chromatin remodelling, and EMSY is implicated in all of these. It can repress the ability of BRCA2 to activate transcription of a reporter construct; it localizes to sites of DNA damage after γ-irradiation; and it interacts with chromatin-remodelling proteins.

The potential involvement in chromatin remodelling was discovered after EMSY was cloned. The sequence was novel, but contained an 80-amino-acid domain — named EMSY N-terminal domain (ENT) — that was found in nine Arabidopsis proteins. These proteins also contained a new Royal-family domain, designated Agenet, that can recognize lysine-methylated histones, which explains the link with chromatin remodelling.

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ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Hughes-Davies, L. et al. EMSY links the BRCA2 pathway to sporadic breast and ovarian cancer. Cell 115, 523–535 (2003)

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  1. Emma Greenwood
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Greenwood, E. EMSY forges a link. Nat Rev Cancer 4, 7 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc1259

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc1259

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