Editorial: When the Light Turns Blue

When Sweet Turns Salty

SEE PAGE 804 O ne of the most challenging aspects of obesity is its link to “metabolic syndrome,” when abdominal obesity is accompanied by high fasting blood glucose, low levels of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, high levels of triglycerides, and elevated blood pressure. With rising obesity rates, metabolic syndrome is likely to become more common in the years ahead (1). Although progress...

When splicing turns bad.

RNA splicing, the process that removes introns from pre-mRNA and links exons together to generate the fully mature messenger RNA (mRNA), is a complicated and highly regulated process. Splicing is catalyzed by the spliceosome, a large RNA-protein complex composed of several small nuclear ribonucleoprotein complexes (snRNPs) that each have a specific task during splicing. Correct splicing is impo...

When Gaze Turns into Grasp

Previous research has provided evidence for a neural system underlying the observation of another person's hand actions. Is the neural system involved in this capacity also important in inferring another person's motor intentions toward an object from their eye gaze? In real-life situations, humans use eye movements to catch and direct the attention of others, often without any accompanying han...

When defense turns into attack

The APOBEC3 cytidine deaminases play an important role in innate immunity but have also emerged as mediators of somatic mutations in human cancer. We recently reported a high incidence of APOBEC-mediated driver mutations in human papillomavirus-associated cancer, suggesting a key role for these enzymes in the development of such tumors.

When the doctor-patient relationship turns sexual.