Virtually all diuse large cell lymphomas and a signi®cant fraction of follicular lymphomas contain translocations and/or point mutations in the 5' noncoding region of the putative oncogene BCL-6, that are presumed to deregulate its expression. BCL-6 encodes a Cys 2 -His 2 zinc ®nger transcriptional repressor with a POZ domain at its amino-terminus. The POZ (or BTB) domain, a 120-amino-acid motif, mediates homomeric and, in some proteins, heteromeric POZ-POZ interactions. In addition, the POZ domain is required for transcriptional repression of several proteins, including BCL-6. Using a yeast two-hybrid screen, we identi®ed N-CoR and SMRT as BCL-6 interacting proteins. Both N-CoR and SMRT, which were originally identi®ed as co-repressors for the unliganded nuclear thyroid hormone and retinoic acid receptors, are components of large complexes containing histone deacetylases. We show that the interaction between BCL-6 and these co-repressors is also detected in the more physiologically relevant mammalian two-hybrid assay. The POZ domain is necessary and sucient for interaction with these corepressors. BCL-6 and N-CoR co-localize to punctate regions of the nucleus. Furthermore, when BCL-6 is bound to its consensus recognition sequence in vivo, it can interact with N-CoR and SMRT. We ®nd, in vitro, that POZ domains from a variety of other POZ domaincontaining proteins, including the transcriptional repressor PLZF, as well as ZID, GAGA and a vaccinia virus protein, SalF17R, also interact with varying anities with N-CoR and SMRT. We ®nd that BCL-6 POZ domain mutations that disrupt the interaction with NCoR and SMRT no longer repress transcription. In addition, these mutations no longer self associate suggesting that self interaction is required for interaction with the co-repressors and for repression. More recently N-CoR has also been implicated in transcriptional repression by the Mad/Mxi proteins. Our demonstration that N-CoR and SMRT interact with the POZ domain containing proteins indicates that these co-repressors are likely involved in the mediation of repression by multiple classes of repressors and may explain, in part, how POZ domain containing repressors mediate transcriptional repression.