Setting the Stage for Notch: the Drosophila Su(H)-Hairless Repressor Complex

Notch signaling is iteratively used throughout development to maintain stem cell potential or in other instances allow differentiation. the central transcription factor in notch signaling is cbf-1/rbp-j,su(h),lag-1 (csl)—su(h) in drosophila—which functions as a molecular switch between transcriptional activation and repression. su(h) represses transcription by forming a complex with the corepressor hairless (h). the su(h)-repressor complex not only competes with the notch intracellular domain (nicd) but also configures the local chromatin landscape. in this issue,yuan and colleagues determined the structure of the su(h)/h complex,showing that a major conformational change within su(h) explains why the binding of nicd and h is mutually exclusive. © 2016 borggrefe,oswald.