title: SET domain protein lysine methyltransferases: Structure, specificity and catalysis.
abstract: Site- and state-specific lysine methylation of histones is catalyzed by a family of proteins that contain the evolutionarily conserved SET domain and plays a fundamental role in epigenetic regulation of gene activation and silencing in all eukaryotes. The recently determined three-dimensional structures of the SET domains from chromosomal proteins reveal that the core SET domain structure contains a two-domain architecture, consisting of a conserved anti-parallel beta-barrel and a structurally variable insert that surround a unusual knot-like structure that comprises the enzyme active site. These structures of the SET domains, either in the free state or when bound to cofactor S-adenosyl-L-homocysteine and/or histone peptide, mimicking an enzyme/cofactor/substrate complex, further yield the structural insights into the molecular basis of the substrate specificity, methylation multiplicity and the catalytic mechanism of histone lysine methylation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York University, One Gustave L Levy Place, New York, NY 10029, USA.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Qian
authors.forename: M-M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Zhou
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D001665:Binding Sites; D002384:Catalysis; D011495:Histone-Lysine N-Methyltransferase / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism*; D006657:Histones / Q000378:metabolism; D006801:Humans; D008745:Methylation; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011485:Protein Binding; D011487:Protein Conformation; D017433:Protein Structure, Secondary; D017434:Protein Structure, Tertiary; D012435:S-Adenosylhomocysteine / Q000378:metabolism; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D013379:Substrate Specificity
chemical_list: D006657:Histones; D012435:S-Adenosylhomocysteine; D011495:Histone-Lysine N-Methyltransferase