a b s t r a c t ADP-ribosylation is a covalent post-translational protein modification catalyzed by ADP-ribosyltransferases and is involved in important processes such as cell cycle regulation, DNA damage response, replication or transcription. Histones are ADP-ribosylated by ADP-ribosyltransferase diphtheria toxin-like 1 at specific amino acid residues, in particular lysines, of the histones tails. Specific ADP-ribosyl hydrolases and poly-ADP-ribose glucohydrolases degrade the ADP-ribose polymers. The ADP-ribose modification is read by zinc finger motifs or macrodomains, which then regulate chromatin structure and transcription. Thus, histone ADP-ribosylation may be considered an additional component of the histone code. Ó 2011 Federation of European Biochemical Societies. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.1. ADP-ribosyltransferase diphtheria toxin-like 1 (ARTD1) ADP-ribosylation is a post-translational modification that is characterized by the synthesis of negatively charged polymers of ADP-ribose at specific acceptor amino acid residues of proteins. The synthesis of poly-ADP-ribose is catalyzed by ADPribosyltransferases (ARTs) and requires nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD + ) as a substrate [1]. The protein family of ARTs currently comprises 22 human enzymes with an ADP-ribosyltransferase domain [2]. The best characterized ART of the diphtheria toxin-like subclass, ADP-ribosyltransferase diphtheria toxin-like 1 (ARTD1/formally called PARP1), is an abundant chromatin associated nuclear protein of 113 kDa [2] that is implicated in crucial processes such as transcriptional control, cell differentiation or cell cycle regulation [3,4]. As for most ARTDs, the catalytic domain that catalyzes poly-ADP-ribosylation is located at the carboxylterminus of ARTD1 [2]. The N-terminal DNA-binding domain of ARTD1 is involved in the binding of different forms of nucleic acids and contains two zinc fingers, a third zinc binding motif and a nuclear localization signal [3]. Binding of this domain to DNA induces a strong interaction with the catalytic domain increasing the V max and decreasing the K m for NAD + of ARTD1 [5]. ARTD1 is both the main nuclear ART in mammalian cells as well as the main acceptor of poly-ADP-ribose in the cell [3,6]. The central auto-modification domain (AMD) contains acceptor amino acids for the covalent attachment of poly-ADP-ribose [5]. Three lysine residues in this ADM (K498, K521 and K524, called KTR) as well as additional residues within the 214 N-terminal amino acids were recently identified as the auto-ADP-ribosylation sites of ARTD1 [5]. Besides ARTD1, several other nuclear proteins (e.g. histones or transcription factors) are poly-ADP-ribosylated and thus functionally regulated by ARTD1 [7,8]. Thereby, poly-ADP-ribosylation plays a major role in a multitude of biological processes, such as maintenance of genomic stability, chromatin modification, cell death and transcriptional regulation. These observations also implicate ARTD1 in different pathologies such as cancer, inflamm...