Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, Published online: 11 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41580-026-01028-1Four recent studies that have differently assessed PRC2–RNA interactions reveal key technical pitfalls underlying research in the field.

This Review discusses how transcript elongation by RNA polymerase II is regulated and how obstacles such as nucleosomes are overcome. Also discussed are the roles of transcription surveillance machine...

The PR-DUB complex is responsible for erasing the repressive histone modification, H2AK119ub1. ASXL1-3 proteins are mutually exclusive catalytic partners of BAP1 in the PR-DUB complex. Somatic heteroz...

This study uses a highly selective inhibitor to elucidate DNMT1’s specific functions and their regulation. Notably, RFN4-mediated SUMOylation enhances DNMT1 mobility and DNA methylation, thereby promo...

Enhancers activate specific target promoters, but whether intrinsic enhancer-promoter compatibility contributes to this specificity is debated. Recent studies using different reporter assays have reac...

This study investigates the consequences of hypermethylation in a progeria syndrome caused by gain-of-function DNMT3A mutations, finding effects on adult stem cell function.

Chromatin states need to be maintained during DNA damage repair. Here, the authors expand the histone chaperone network involved in repair-coupled chromatin restoration and highlight a mechanistic coo...

An analytical pipeline called Iteratively Defined Lengths of Inaccessibility (IDLI) maps the genome-wide occupancy of a range of nucleosome types and shows that most nucleosomes exhibit programmed ‘di...

Cryo-EM reveals how kinetochore-microtubule attachment is regulated by Aurora B substrate accessibility on microtubules.

Three fundamental classes of gene regulatory elements were identified in Escherichia coli in the 1960s: operators bound by repressor proteins, promoters bound by the basic transcription machinery, and...

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Multiple copies of intact MSR nucleate de novo heterochromatin and reveal that the establishment of mouse pericentric heterochromatin is associated with bidirectional repeat RNA, Integrator complex en...

Some proteins mimic the repressive mark H3K27me3, but the physiological relevance of this phenomenon was unclear. Agius et al. show that the PRC2 subunits JARID2 and PALI1 mimic H3K27me3 to antagonize...

This Perspective explores the co-evolution of transposable elements and KRAB zinc-finger proteins in relation to their integration into human gene regulatory networks, highlighting their potential eff...

Evolutionarily related ‘proto-point’ centromeres providing resolution to the evolutionary origins of point centromeres are identified in yeast, and comparison shows they evolved in an ancestor with re...

Neville, Ferguson et al. show that non-canonical Polycomb repressive complex 1.1-mediated gene silencing is antagonized by DOT1L and is required for the therapeutic efficacy of Menin and DOT1L inhibit...

Nitsch et al. show that short-chain acylations of histone H4K16, acetylation (C2), propionylation (C3), and butyrylation (C4) modulate chromatin structure in vitro. These effects can translate in vivo...

Nature Communications - The type I interferon response is suppressed during early development, making embryos susceptible to pathogens. Here, the authors show that this suppression contributes to...

Epigenetics is fundamental to cell differentiation as it enables cells with identical genomes to adopt distinct fates. Some epigenetic information can also be transmitted between generations, in a pro...