Screening for Responses to Tuberculosis
Mycobacteria cause tuberculosis and leprosy by establishing a long-term infection of macrophages. Rao and colleagues employed a genome-wide RNAi screen to identify host factors regulating the pathogen load. In a related paper, Ramakrishnan and colleagues find that a genetic variation in the human population impacts on the susceptibility to tuberculosis and leprosy. Preview by Gros and colleagues.

miRNA: From Decay to Decoy
miRNAs downreguate target mRNAs by complementary base pairing, but Perrotti and colleagues now report that miR-328 has a second function: it acts as a decoy by binding hnRNP and lifting its repression of C/EBPα, thereby boosting its expression. Preview by Beitzinger and Meister.

Molecular Insight into Autism Spectrum Disorder
Angelman Syndrome is a debilitating neurodevelopmental disorder, frequently found in autism patients, which is caused by mutations in the UBE3A ubiquitin ligase gene. Greenberg and colleagues now identify the UBE3A substrate Arc that promotes endocytosis of neuronal AMPA receptors, giving insight into the synaptic defects that underlie the cognitive deficits in Angelman Syndrome. Preview by Tai and Shuman.

miRNA Decoy in Tumor Suppression
miRNAs are known to downregulate target mRNAs by complementary base pairing, but there's more to the story. Watch and listen as Danilo Perrotti and Anna Eiring take you on a brief, personalized tour of their discovery that miRNAs also act as decoys, boosting gene expression by binding and inhibiting hnRNPs involved in translational repression. The decoy function of miR-382 plays an important role in suppressing leukemia progenitors. Read more in Eiring et al.

Blast from Our Eukaryotic Past
Through comparison of the genomes of organisms in the five eukaryotic supergroups, conclusions about the last common eukaryotic ancestor can be drawn. Now, Prochnik and colleagues report the genome sequence of the amoeboflagellate Naegleria gruberi, revealing surprising complexity, and infer that the last common ancestor showed similar complexity.

In this PaperClip, Bob Kruger speaks with Simon Prochnik about the surprising genome complexity of the free-living single-cell organism Naegleria gruberi.

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Giving Cells a Proper Burial
In this Review, Shigekazu Nagata, Rikinari Hanayama, and Kohki Kawane discuss the process by which dead cells are degraded by phagocytes and how impaired clearance of dead cells leads to activation of the immune system.

Autoimmunity and the Clearance of Dead Cells
Shigekazu Nagata, Rikinari Hanayama, and Kohki Kawane

In our February podcast, we hear from Colin Renfrew about the earliest journeys of our ancestors revealed by archaeogenetics (0:50). Next, we learn from Bob Roeder about a versatile transcription elongation factor with several key functions in the cell (11:12). And stay tuned for a conversation with Mike Cleary about an oncoprotein and its many partners, which are involved in leukemia (16:21).

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In this PaperClip, Lara Szewczak speaks with Yi Zhong about Rac's role in forgetting.

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