2014: signaling breakthroughs of the year

The 2014 breakthroughs fell into four main areas: innate immunity, host-microbe interactions, cell death signaling, and methodological advances in the study of cell signaling. Nominations included new discoveries about signaling in innate immune cells, innate immune functions for lymphoid and nonhematological cells, and the importance of host-microbe interactions for the regulation of host physiology. Also this year, we received nominations highlighting molecular mechanisms by which p53 contributes to the pathology of chronic inflammation and how signaling pathways mediate programmed necrotic cell death. Finally, 2014 saw the use of new techniques to study cell signaling and identify drug targets, such as the in vivo use of RNA interference to study signaling in T cells and new computational methods to study large datasets of different data types.