Santanach Buxaderas, Alexandra, 1988-Blanco, EnriqueJiang, HuaMolloy, Kelly R.Sansó Martínez, Miriam, 1979-LaCava, JohnMorey Ramonell, LluísDi Croce, Luciano2018-06-222018-06-222017Santanach A, Blanco E, Jiang H, Molloy KR, Sansó M, LaCava J et al. The Polycomb group protein CBX6 is an essential regulator of embryonic stem cell identity. Nat Commun. 2017 Nov 1;8(1):1235. DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-01464-w2041-1723http://hdl.handle.net/10230/34950Polycomb group proteins (PcG) are transcriptional repressors that control cell identity and development. In mammals, five different CBX proteins associate with the core Polycomb repressive complex 1 (PRC1). In mouse embryonic stem cells (ESCs), CBX6 and CBX7 are the most highly expressed CBX family members. CBX7 has been recently characterized, but little is known regarding the function of CBX6. Here, we show that CBX6 is essential for ESC identity. Its depletion destabilizes the pluripotency network and triggers differentiation. Mechanistically, we find that CBX6 is physically and functionally associated to both canonical PRC1 (cPRC1) and non-canonical PRC1 (ncPRC1) complexes. Notably, in contrast to CBX7, CBX6 is recruited to chromatin independently of H3K27me3. Taken together, our findings reveal that CBX6 is an essential component of ESC biology that contributes to the structural and functional complexity of the PRC1 complex.application/pdfeng© The Author(s) 2017. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.info:eu-repo/semantics/articlehttp://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-01464-wEmbryonic stem cellsEpigeneticsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess