●Poxvirus tropism. McFadden, G. Nature Reviews Microbiology March (2005) This Review article discusses the prospects of exploiting host-restricted poxvirus vectors for vaccines, gene therapy or tissue-targeted oncolytic viral therapies for the treatment of human cancers.

●Transcriptome PETs: a genome's best friends. Peters, P. B. A. & Velculescu, V. E. Nature Methods February (2005) A new gene-discovery method that targets the 5′ and 3′ ends of transcripts looks set to improve gene identification and annotation.

●Do peptides control their own birth and death? Fåhraeus, R. Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology March (2005) The tumour suppressor p53 is just one protein that has the capacity to control its own rate of synthesis and degradation. How common is this phenomenon, given that not all mRNA-translation-initiation events give rise to functional proteins?

●Do inducers of apoptosis trigger caspase independent cell death? Chipuk, J. E. & Green, D. R. Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology March (2005)

●The role of BH3-only proteins in the immune system. Strasser, A. Nature Reviews Immunology March (2005) Defects in programmed cell death have been found to cause or contribute to diseases of the immune system, including lymphoma and leukaemia. This Review article describes the role of the pro-apoptotic BH3-only proteins in the development and function of the immune system.

●The life and death of DNA-PK. Collis, S. J., DeWeese, T. L., Jeggo, P. A. & Parker, A. R. Oncogene 3 February (2005) DNA protein kinase is an essential component involved in the repair of DNA double-strand breaks. Would inhibition of this kinase increase the sensitivity of cancer cells to therapies like ionizing radiation?

●A mismatched role for Bcl-2. La Thangue, N. B. Nature Cell Biology February (2005) This News and Views article discusses new evidence indicating that the anti-apoptotic protein BCL2 might have a function in DNA mismatch repair. BCL2, in conjunction with the retinoblastoma protein, retains E2F1 in an inactive state and so hinders the expression of the mismatch repair E2F-responsive gene MSH2.

●FoxM1 dances with mitosis. Costa, R. H. Nature Cell Biology February (2005) A new transcriptional target, CENP-F, of the mammalian forkhead box M1 protein reveals how this protein regulates the G2/M transition and ensures chromosome stability and proper segregation during mitosis.