Hunt, S. P & Mantyh, P.W. The molecular dynamics of pain control. Nature Reviews Neuroscience February (2001) www.nature.com/nrn.

Nature Insight on biocatalysis. Nature 11 January (2001) www.nature.com.  A collection of reviews on designing and using enzymes, abzymes and ribozymes for new purposes, from synthetic organic chemistry to bioremediation.

Pennacchio, L. A. & Rubin, E. Post-transcriptional gene silencing by double-stranded RNA Nature Reviews Genetics February (2001) www.nature.com/nrg.

Flier, J. S. The missing link with obesity? Nature 18 January (2001) www.nature.com.  Resistin is a protein from fat cells that is implicated in diabetes and obesity. This News & Views discusses the potential functions of resistin in these two diseases.

Zheng, T.S. Death by design: the big debut of small molecules. Nature Cell Biology February (2001) www.cellbio.nature.com. This News & Views discusses two papers on small-molecule inhibitors of Bcl-2 proteins.

Baulcombe, D. Diced defence Nature 18 January (2001) www.nature.com. This News & Views describes an RNA-cleaving enzyme involved in the first step of RNA silencing.

Wurst, W. & Bally-Cuif, L. Neural plate patterning: upstream and downstream of the isthmic organizer. Nature Reviews Neuroscience February (2001) www.nature.com/nrn.

Pedersen, R. A. Sperm and mammalian polarity. Nature 25 January (2001) www.nature.com. This News & Views discusses a new-found function for sperm entry in mammalian axis formation.

Hess, D.T., Matsumoto, A., Nudelman, R. & Stamler, J.S.  S -nitrosylation: spectrum and specificity. Nature Cell Biology February (2001) www.cellbio.nature.com. Nitric oxide can nitrosylate specific cysteine residues in proteins, but it's extremely difficult to isolate the modified proteins so we are still in the dark about the function of this post-translational modification. This News & Views describes a technical breakthrough that might help to reveal the functions of S -nitrosylation.

Livesy, F. J. & Cepko, C. L. Vertebrate neural-fate determination: lessons from the retina. Nature Reviews Neuroscience February (2001) www.nature.com/nrn.

Wasserman, P. M., Jovine, L. & Litscher, E. S. A profile of fertilization in mammals. Nature Cell Biology February (2001) www.cellbio.nature.com. This review discusses the cell biology of mammalian fertilization.