Human-Chromatin-Related Protein Interactions Identify a Demethylase Complex Required for Chromosome Segregation

Chromatin regulation is driven by multicomponent protein complexes, which form functional modules. Deciphering the components of these modules and their interactions is central to understanding the molecular pathways these proteins are regulating, their functions, and their relation to both normal development and disease. We describe the use of affinity purifications of tagged human proteins coupled with mass spectrometry to generate a protein-protein interaction map encompassing known and predicted chromatin-related proteins. On the basis of 1,394 successful purifications of 293 proteins, we report a high-confidence (85% precision) network involving 11,464 protein-protein interactions among 1,738 different human proteins, grouped into 164 often overlapping protein complexes with a particular focus on the family of JmjC-containing lysine demethylases, their partners, and their roles in chromatin remodeling. We show that RCCD1 is a partner of histone H3K36 demethylase KDM8 and demonstrate that both are important for cell-cycle-regulated transcriptional repression in centromeric regions and accurate mitotic division.