LAUSR

CXXC domain-containing proteins are often involved in different biological processes, such as cell proliferation and development, apoptosis, DNA repair, signaling transduction and tumourigenesis, by regulating transcription. 12 CXXC domain-containing proteins have been identified in human, and structural together with DNA binding studies reveal that these CXXC domains, a 50-70 residues module of two conserved CXXCXXC motifs, bind to non-methylated DNA in different sequence contexts. These CXXC domain-containing proteins and their complexes regulate various biological processes and the CXXC domain plays an important role in the recruitment and regulation of their associated chromatin modifying activities. In this review, we summarize these human CXXC domain-containing proteins in terms of their structures, biology and biochemistry, and also discuss how they mediate crosstalk among different epigenetic modifications.