HIV-1 immunopathogenesis: How good interferon turns bad

Endoplasmic reticulum stress in glomerulonephritis: the bad guy turns good?

The balance between somatic cellular machinery for defense against local effector molecules determines the tissue fate of inflammation—progression or resolution. We previously proposed the concept of glomerular “self-defense” as essential for spontaneous subsidence of glomerular inflammation.1 A line of evidence supporting this concept is that glomeruli, when faced with activated leukocytes or ...

hiv/aids good news and bad news

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...

Pathogen evolution: How good bacteria go bad

Recent findings suggest that dysentery-causing Shigella strains have arisen several times from Escherichia coli via plasmid acquisition and phenotypic convergence. Similarly, three Bacillus strains with distinct pathogenic properties are derivatives of a single species whose behavior is profoundly altered by acquired plasmids.

HIV vaccines: good news or bad?

The paper reviewed on the preceding page1 has received much media attention, and has featured in Elisabeth Pisani’s blog, ‘Sex and Science’. I felt it could be helpful to Journal readers if I also reviewed some of the concerns about the HIV vaccine paper2 that were detailed in that blog. Dr Pisani’s blog focuses mainly on specific aspects of the HIV vaccine trial paper:2 approaches taken to sta...