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China wants to become a scientific powerhouse. A special News Report that starts on page 261 looks at their current progress. The cover shows the Jiayuguan Pass of the Great Wall in northwest China (Photo by China Photos/Getty Images).
The neurotransmitter orexin regulates motivated behaviors such as arousal and feeding—and is now implicated in behaviors associated with addiction in rats. The release of orexin onto dopamine cells enables cocaine to induce the neuronal changes that lead to addiction-like behavior.
During chronic viral infections, CD8+ T cells lose much of their ability to proliferate, produce cytokines and kill. A new discovery shows how to restore their antiviral function.
Stem cells are mobilized from the bone marrow to the peripheral blood as a source of stem cells for transplantation in cancer and genetic diseases. Exactly how the mobilization-inducing drugs operate has not been clear—but the answer may lie partly with the stimulation of bone-forming cells by signals from the sympathetic nervous system.
A peptide fragment derived from extracellular matrix collagen attracts inflammatory cells by mimicking the activity of a chemokine—potentially contributing to lung injury (pages 317–323).
A small peptide administered into the brain of rats seems to abolish the rewarding effects of nicotine and THC. The peptide disrupts the interaction between a receptor for serotonin on dopamine-containing neurons and the tumor suppressor PTEN (pages 324–329).
Mutations in components of the RAS-MAPK pathway provide a unifying mechanism for several phenotypically overlapping, yet clinically distinct human 'neuro-cardio-facial-cutaneous' (NCFC) syndromes. These rare diseases may provide new insights into the regulation of this pathway and its role in various cancers.
