Gene expression: degrade to derepress

Chromatin immunoprecipitation and sequencing (ChIP‐seq) provides a static snap‐shot of DNA‐associated proteins which fails to reflect the dynamics of the DNA‐bound proteome. Now, Catic and co‐workers combine ubiquitin ChIP‐seq and proteasome inhibitors to map sites of DNA‐associated protein degradation on a genome‐wide scale. They identify an ubiquitin ligase which targets a transcriptional repressor for destruction by the proteasome, thus activating transcription of specific genes. These findings reveal that the ubiquitin proteasome system actively regulates transcription.