We thank members of the Muthuswamy laboratory for discussions, R. Schiff for TamR cells, T. Xiao for advice on CRISPR–Cas9, J. Zoeller for advice on mouse experiments, F. Au-Yeung for assistance with BioID experiments, and M. Yuan for assistance with mass spectrometry. The work was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (grant 5P01CA120964; J.M.A.), a long term postdoctoral fellowship (LT000091/2014) from the Human Frontier Science Program and research funds from the Yamagata prefectural government and the City of Tsuruoka (Y.S.), and the Breast Cancer Research Foundation (S.K.M.).

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Nature thanks Jason Carroll, Zach Schafer and the other anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.