FAT10 (HLA-F-adjacent transcript 10) is a ubiquitin-like modifier that is commonly overexpressed in various tumors. It was found to play a role in mitotic regulation through its interaction with mitotic arrestdeficient 2 (MAD2). Overexpression of FAT10 promotes tumor growth and malignancy. Here, we identified the MAD2-binding interface of FAT10 to be located on its first ubiquitin-like domain whose NMR structure thus was determined. We further proceeded to demonstrate that disruption of the FAT10-MAD2 interaction through mutation of specific MAD2-binding residues did not interfere with the interaction of FAT10 with its other known interacting partners. Significantly, ablation of the FAT10-MAD2 interaction dramatically limited the promalignant capacity of FAT10, including promoting tumor growth in vivo and inducing aneuploidy, proliferation, migration, invasion, and resistance to apoptosis in vitro. Our results strongly suggest that the interaction of FAT10 with MAD2 is a key mechanism underlying the promalignant property of FAT10 and offer prospects for the development of anticancer strategies.chromosomal instability | ubiquitin | aneuploidy | cancer progression | FAT10 F AT10 (HLA-F-adjacent transcript 10) is a ubiquitin-like modifier protein that functions as a proteasomal degradation signal (1-3). Recent studies, however, have suggested that FAT10's functions extend beyond protein degradation. FAT10 is expressed mainly in tissues of the immune system, including the spleen and thymus (4, 5). In immune cells, FAT10 is strongly induced by proinflammatory stimuli and facilitates T-cell activation by enhancing antigen presentation of mature dendritic cells (6). FAT10 also is induced by proinflammatory cytokines in various tissues outside the immune system including the liver and colon (7,8), although the physiological functions of this response remain unknown. What is clear, however, is that constitutive induction of FAT10 has deleterious consequences in promoting cellular malignancy. Our group recently has reported that ectopic expression of FAT10 induced malignant transformation in nontumorigenic cells and tumor promotion in tumorigenic cells (9), implicating FAT10 in facilitating tumor growth and progression. This finding is consistent with multiple reports that found FAT10 to be up-regulated in several tumor types including tumors of the liver and colon (5,8,10,11).To date, the mechanism underlying FAT10's promalignant characteristic remains unclear. One compelling albeit indirect piece of evidence stems from the finding that FAT10 interacts with the spindle checkpoint protein mitotic arrest-deficient 2 (MAD2) during mitosis and reduces MAD2 localization to the kinetochores, resulting in aneuploidy (7, 12), a phenomenon closely associated with tumorigenesis and a hallmark of many solid tumors (13). Given the strong association between aneuploidy, chromosomal instability, and cancer development (reviewed in ref. 14), we hypothesized that FAT10 induces malignant progression through its interaction with MAD2. The...