Interplay between nuclear survivin and the PRC2 complex and its impact on H3K27me3-directed transcriptional repression

Polycomb repressor complex 2 (PRC2) tri-methylates histone 3 at lysine 27 (H3K27me3), a post translational modification that induces heterochromatin formation and transcriptional repression. Survivin (also known as BIRC5) is a nucleocytoplasmic shuttling protein that is kept out of the nucleus in clement conditions, but that accumulates there in times of stress and in certain specialised cells. Although the cytoplasmic functions of survivin are well documented, there is comparatively less understanding of its roles within the nucleus. Here, we investigated whether nuclear survivin can affect transcriptional programming. Using interaction analyses and qPCR, we report that it binds to the enzymatic subunit of PRC2 (EZH2) and H3K27me3, and causes depression of its target genes in a variety of human cells.