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IMMUNOLOGY: Mobilizing Cytokine Receptor Key Step in Defense Coordination
In defending the body against invaders, the immune system's choice of which defense strategy to follow--promoting an inflammatory response or boosting antibody production--can make the difference between health and disease. Laurie Glimcher and Roberto Maldonado have discovered that this decision, made by the system's T helper progenitor cells, depends on the movement of a particular molecule, the receptor for the cytokine interferon gamma, into and out of an area of cell-cell contact called the immunological synapse. Their work, published in the Sept. 30 Nature, defines a new role for the immunological synapse in integrating signals that guide decisions in T cell development.

PSYCHIATRY: Studies Give Boost to Therapies for Depression
Up to half of all people diagnosed with major depressive disorder will find only partial relief or none at all from the most commonly prescribed antidepressants. More and more evidence suggests that initial folate levels in the blood may help clinicians predict which patients will respond to antidepressants. Appearing in the August Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, two new research papers by George Papakostas and his colleagues suggest that low folate levels may help guide clinicians at two critical junctures: what to do when certain antidepressants are not working and whom to watch more closely for relapse when the drugs do help.

CELL BIOLOGY: Chemical Genetics Identifies New Way of Disrupting Cell's Protein Recycling System
Chemical genetics, the use of small inhibitors to disrupt biological pathways, may uncover interactions that traditional genetics misses. In the Oct. 1 Science, Randall King (left) and colleagues describe a chemical genetic screen that uncovered ubistatins, small chemicals that interfere in a totally unexpected way with the cell's protein recycling system. Greg Tochtrop helped to characterize the ubistatins, which bind to the interface between two ubiquitin molecules, masking the ability of ubiquitin tags to be recognized by the protein-recycling proteasome. Targeting the ubiquitin-ubiquitin interface could prove a novel approach for treating cancer.