Master regulators has been discovered to govern the proper differentiation of stem cells in many tissues. Epigenetic factors, working as the executors to modulate the transcriptional machinery, were often recruited by master regulators to fulfill their functions. In our study, we show that OLIG2, a master regulator of oligodendrocyte specification, functions as a transcriptional repressor beyond its canonical role as an activator. By recruiting SETDB1, OLIG2 builds the H3K9me3 modification on the genomic loci, such as Sox11, destined to be downregulated for OPC differentiation.
