Prior work established that the silencing of HDAC8 by RNAi activated apoptosis and/or inhibited the growth of human cancer cells.25,26 No significant changes in BMF mRNA levels were detected after treatment of colon cancer cells with 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine (Supplementary Figure 10), implying that DNA promoter methylation did not have a critical role in silencing BMF transcription under the conditions reported here. Here, BMF is linked to cancer.