Portrait of a protein family

SPOC domains are protein domains found across eukaryotes. SPOC containing proteins are associated with transcription regulation, development and differentiation. In their latest study, the lab of Dea Slade has now studied all known SPOC containing human proteins. They discovered that the SPOC domain is universally able to read phosphorylation marks in the C-terminal domain of RNA polymerase II, but that subfamilies of SPOC proteins recognize different patterns of CTD marks and bind to additional proteins. The study is published in Nature Communications.