Ancient news: HMGBs are universal sentinels

Yanai et al. (2009, Nature 462, 99-103) have shown that high mobility group boxs (HMGBs) are universal sensors of viral nucleic acids, and thus of cell infection. This appears to be an evolutionary ancient mechanism of virus detection, and possibly might be a facet of a more general propensity of HMGBs to act as integrators of signals that pertain to peace and stress, life and death.