Hui Zhang (Chemistry and Biochemistry) and a team of UNLV biochemistry researchers recently published a paper in the journal Nature Communications. The paper is entitled “Methylated DNMT1 and E2F are Targeted for Proteolysis by L3MBTL3 and CRL4DCAF5 Ubiquitin Ligase”. Lysine-specific methylation of histones is a major epigenetic modification that regulates chromatin structure and gene expression. Emerging evidence indicates that a large number of nonhistone proteins are also lysine methylated and a major function of this modification is to control the stability of the methylated proteins. The research team  discovered for the first time a novel mechanism by which the stability of methylated proteins is regulated to control the epigenetic inheritance of DNA methylation and gene expression during cell division.