These tails are subject to several post-translational covalent modifications, together with acetylation, phosphorylation, ubiquitination, sumoylation and methylation (reviewed in 1 ). The exception to the rule is the DOT1 household, members of which methylate K79 in the globular area of histone H3 and that are structurally not associated to SET-area proteins 4 - 6 Current work suggests that SET-domain-containing proteins methylate a couple of proteins in addition to histones (see later)