SUMO conjugation of cellular proteins is essential for proper progression of mitosis. PIASy, a SUMO E3 ligase, is required for mitotic SUMOylation of chromosomal proteins, yet the regulatory mechanism behind the PIASy-dependent SUMOylation during mitosis has not been determined. Using a series of truncated PIASy proteins, we have found that the N terminus of PIASy is not required for SUMO modification in vitro but is essential for mitotic SUMOylation in Xenopus egg extracts. We demonstrate that swapping the N terminus of PIASy protein with the corresponding region of other PIAS family members abolishes chromosomal binding and mitotic SUMOylation. We further show that the N-terminal domain of PIASy is sufficient for centromeric localization. We identified that the N-terminal domain of PIASy interacts with the Rod/Zw10 complex, and immunofluorescence further reveals that PIASy colocalizes with Rod/Zw10 in the centromeric region. We show that the Rod/Zw10 complex interacts with the first 47 residues of PIASy which were particularly important for mitotic SUMOylation. Finally, we show that depletion of Rod compromises the centromeric localization of PIASy and SUMO2/3 in mitosis. Together, we demonstrate a fundamental mechanism of PIASy to localize in the centromeric region of chromosome to execute centromeric SUMOylation during mitosis.SUMOylation is a protein modification process conserved from yeast to vertebrates (1). The consequences of SUMO 2 (small ubiquitin-like modifier) modification that have been elucidated over the past decade include modulation of gene transcription, DNA repair, protein translocation, protein/protein interaction, chromosomal organization, and sister chromatid segregation (2-4). Vertebrates have three SUMO isoforms and all three display roughly 50% identity with the single SUMO found in yeast (1). SUMO is conjugated to cellular substrates by an analogous pathway to that of ubiquitin. It has been reported that SUMOylation is mediated without E3 ligases in vitro (5, 6), but under physiological conditions, SUMO E3 ligases are essential to execute SUMOylation of cellular substrates (7-10). There are mainly two types of SUMO E3 ligases in vertebrates, RanBP2 (Nup358), and Siz/PIAS. RanBP2 has no homolog in yeast, and its ligase function is independent of either HECT or Ring finger-type ubiquitin E3 ligases (11). Siz/PIAS, on the other hand, initially identified in budding yeast, functions similar to Ring finger ubiquitin ligases (8). Vertebrates have four PIAS proteins (PIAS1, PIAS3, PIASx, and PIASy) that share important conserved functional domains (12). The SAP (scaffold attachment factor-A/B, acinus and PIAS) domain is positioned at the N terminus, and directly binds AT-rich regions of DNA (13-15). The SP-Ring domain is related to that of ubiquitin E3 ligase and is responsible for Ubc9 recruitment (16). The SUMO-interacting motif (SIM) is situated after the SP-Ring and redirects the Ubc9ϳSUMO complex on substrate proteins, potentially contributing to SUMO paralogue specificity (17,18). Doma...