3 Diverse roles of protein arginine methyltransferases.

Methylation of arginine residues within proteins results in a more subtle change than phosphorylation, but one that also has profound impacts on eukaryotic organisms. The rapidly expanding list of protein arginine methyltransferases (PRMTs) and PRMT substrates has implicated arginine methylation in a wide variety of cellular processes. This chapter explores the diverse functions of PRMTs by examining evidence for effects of arginine methylation and PRMTs on specific cellular processes, and connecting the data to molecular mechanisms that have been proposed to explain these effects.