Meetings: Save that mouse!

Wait, save that integrin!

RNF169 flips the repair switch P oulsen et al. describe an enzyme that helps a cell determine which repair method to use on DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs). Unrepaired DSBs can incite genomic chaos, spurring sections of chromosomes to relocate or even vanish. To ensure that doesn’t happen, a cell wraps a molecular bandage around a DSB. Enzymes arrive at the injury and ubiquitylate the surroundi...

Meetings that flatter, but may not deliver.

76 The e-mails come from Amber, Rainy, Dora, and Arlene. “How are you doing now?” some begin. “Hope this e-mail fi nds all the best on you.” Flattering and solicitous and written in bewitchingly mangled English, the e-mails have the hallmarks of spam offering carnal pleasure—except they are actually far tamer. They are invitations to attend scientifi c meetings in China organized by a company t...

No proof that predator culls save livestock, study claims.

INTERHEART: nine factors that could save your life.

No matter where you live, how old you are or what you look like, health researchers have recently discovered that 90% of the most common cardiovascular event, the first heart attack (myocardial infarction), can be attributed to nine modifiable risk factors. The risk factors include: cigarette smoking, an abnormal ratio of blood lipids, high blood pressure, diabetes, abdominal obesity, stress, a...

Superoxide dismutases: active sites that save, but a protein that kills.

Protection from oxidative damage is sufficiently important that biology has evolved three independent enzymes for hastening superoxide dismutation: the Cu- and Zn-containing superoxide dismutases (Cu,Zn-SODs), the SODs that are specific for Fe or Mn or function with either of the two (Fe-SODs, Mn-SODs or Fe/Mn-SODs), and the SODs that use Ni (Ni-SODs). Despite the overwhelming similarities betw...