In This Issue (original) (raw)

Often, as scientists, we need to look at problems in a different, though not necessarily new, light. We continually challenge hypotheses and re-evaluate dogmas, and, in doing so, we often find that new theories emerge from looking at old observations. In their article on page 46, Ralf Lösel and Martin Wehling discuss nongenomic steroid hormone signalling. First noted back in the 1940s, only relatively recently has this phenomenon been accepted, and new insights into the mechanisms that underlie this process are coming to light.

Similarly, members of the CD44 glycoprotein family were initially thought to function solely as adhesion receptors. However, they are now known to affect processes from cell survival to differentiation, too, which can be attributed to their recently discovered signalling function (see the article on page 33 by Helmut Ponta, Larry Sherman and Peter A. Herrlich).