SWI/SNF (SWItching defective/Sucrose Non-Fermenting) is a multi-protein complex that regulates chromatin structure by altering the associations between DNA and histones, which can lead to changes in gene expression. Chromatin remodeling is one mechanism of epigenetic gene regulation (Allis and Jenuwein, 2016), and members of the SWI/SNF chromatin remodeling complex have been implicated as epigenetic regulators in the development of cancer (Kadoch and Crabtree, 2015, Nickerson et al., 2017). The complexes contain an enzymatic core of four subunits and several accessory subunits that vary with distinct SWI/SNF complex types (Fig. 1; Son and Crabtree, 2014). Different accessory subunits lend specificity to the function of the different complexes; some accessory subunits are found in all complexes, while others are specific to a particular type of SWI/SNF complex (Kadoch and Crabtree, 2015, Son and Crabtree, 2014).
