Glioma and post-translational modifications: A complex relationship

Post-translational modifications (PTMs) are common covalent processes in biochemical pathways that alter protein function and activity. These modifications occur through proteolytic cleavage or attachment of modifying groups, such as phosphoryl, methyl, glycosyl, or acetyl groups, with one or more amino acid residues of a single protein. Some PTMs also present crosstalk abilities that affect both protein functionality and structure, creating new proteoforms. Any alteration in organism homeostasis may be a cancer hallmark. Cataloging PTMs and consequently, emerging proteoforms, present new therapeutic targets, approaches, and opportunities to discover additional discriminatory biomarkers in disease diagnostics. In this review, we focus on experimentally confirmed PTMs and their potential crosstalk in glioma research to introduce new opportunities for this tumor type, which emerge within the PTMomics area.