The 26S proteasome. Image kindly provided by Professor Joel Kowit from his work Degradation, a depiction in stained glass of the 26S proteasome (see http://joelkowit.com). In this issue of the Biochemical Journal, VerPlank and Goldberg describe how phosphorylation of the proteasome regulates protein breakdown by reviewing the ability of several kinases to alter proteasome function; see pages 3355–3371 for further details.