Post-translational modifications

The diversity of modifications that a nascent peptide acquires as it is transported to its target cellular location is long established, as is the ability of tags such as phosphorylation and ubiquitylation to regulate signalling and protein turnover. But recently we have seen a renaissance of interest in the ability of additional modifications — from ubiquitin-like proteins to moieties such as sugars or methyl, acetyl and prenyl groups — to target specific sites in proteins and to coordinately exert dynamic control over protein function in diverse cell biological contexts. The articles in this series discuss new insights that have been gained into how ‘old and new’ modifications are regulated and recognized, and how they crosstalk with one another to control fundamental biological processes.