Cancer cells, on your histone marks, get SET DB1, silence retrotransposons, and go!

Abstract

Cancer cells thrive on genetic and epigenetic changes that confer a selective advantage but also need strategies to avoid immune recognition. In this issue, Cuellar et al. (2017.J. Cell Biol. https://doi.org/10.1083/jcb.201612160) find that the histone methyltransferase SET DB1 enables acute myeloid leukemia cells to evade sensing of retrotransposons by innate immune receptors.