Abstract Polycomb Group (PcG) proteins play a vital role in establishing and maintaining gene expression patterns during cellular differentiation and development. They are epigenetic regulators that are responsible for the repression of target genes involved in development and cell fate specification. PcG proteins function as multimeric, chromatin-associated protein complexes. In mammals, there are two major Polycomb Repressive Complexes, PRC1 and PRC2 that possess histone-modifying activity crucial for their role in gene repression through methylation of histone H3K27, as well as the mono-ubiquitination of histone H2AK119. Components of both PRC1 and PRC2 have been shown to be elevated in a number of tumor types and play an important role in neoplastic progression. Major components of human PRC2 include the histone methyltransferase, Enhancer of Zeste Homolog 2, and its known binding partners, Embryonic Ectoderm Development (EED) and Suppressor of Zeste 12 (SUZ12) that collectively function as a multi-subunit complex trimethylating histone H3K27. Fundamental collaborators of PRC2 in epigenetic silencing include human PRC1 which consists of B lymphoma Mo-MLV insertion region 1 (BMI1), RING1A (also known as RING1), and RING1B (also known as RING2 or RNF2). Together, they function as a multi-protein complex to ubiquitinate histone H2A at lysine 119 (uH2A). The leading hypothesis regarding PRC2 and PRC1 interaction is that PRC2-mediated tri-methylation of H3K27 recruits PRC1 to genomic loci leading to chromatin condensation and epigenetic silencing of target genes. While the evidence linking PRC1 and PRC2 is circumstantial, a physical or molecular link between these complexes has not been established. In this study, we make an unexpected observation that EED, previously considered a critical component of PRC2, is instead a shared component of PRC2 and PRC1 that functions to interchange these epigenetic complexes at sites of histone modification. This observation markedly enhances our understanding of how PRC2 and PRC1 coordinate epigenetic regulation and may have implications in therapeutically targeting these master regulators of transcription. Citation Format: Qi Cao, Xiaoju Wang, Meng Zhao, Rendong Yang, Rohit Malik, Yuanyuan Qiao, Anton Poliakov, Xuhong Cao, Clair Harris, Felix Y. Feng, Sundeep Kalantry, Zhaohui Qin, Saravana M. Dhanasekaran, Arul M. Chinnaiyan. The central role of EED in orchestration of polycomb group complexes. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr LB-132. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-LB-132