Kill or Be Killed

To Kill but Not Be Killed: A Delicate Balance

Before launching a missile, it is necessary to design an efficient safety net for self-protection. In this issue of Cell, Ellermeier et al. (2006) describe the mechanism underlying a biological safety net for the soil bacterium Bacillus subtilis. This bacterium protects itself from a toxic protein it secretes by upregulating an immunity protein, which it does by sequestering a transcriptional r...

Politicians : be killed or survive Benno

In the course of history, a large number of politicians have been assassinated. To investigate this phenomenon, rational choice hypotheses are developed and tested using a large data set covering close to 100 countries over a period of 20 years. Several strategies, in addition to security measures, are shown to significantly reduce the probability of politicians being attacked or killed: extend...

Acetylate to kill or save

Text by Nicole LeBrasseur [email protected] Acetylate to kill or save M ammalian p53 can kill, or it can save. The end result, according to Knights et al. (page 533), depends on opposing acetylation events that send p53 down disparate paths. The stabilization of p53 following cellular damage can trigger either apoptosis or a reversible cell cycle checkpoint that probably gives cells time ...

DNA vaccines and apoptosis: to kill or not to kill?

The Journal of Clinical Investigation | July 2003 | Volume 112 | Number 1 RNase. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 100:4102-4107. 14. Shinkura, R., et al. 2003. The influence of transcriptional orientation on endogenous switch region function. Nat. Immunol. 4:435–441. 15. Yu, K., Chedin, F., Hsieh, C.L., Wilson, T.E., and Lieber, M.R. 2003. R-loops at immunoglobulin class switch regions in the ch...

Do genes allow inflammation to kill or not to kill?