title: Moving in for the kill: activation of an endoribonuclease toxin by a quorum-sensing peptide.
abstract: Extracellular death factor is a quorum-sensing pentapeptide that relays cell density information to an intracellular toxin-antitoxin complex. In this issue of Molecular Cell, Belitsky et al. (2011) demonstrate that the peptide competes with the antitoxin for toxin binding and directly activates the latter's endoribonuclease activity.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Life Sciences and Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre, The University of Manchester, 131 Princess Street, Manchester M17DN, UK. finbarr.hayes@manchester.ac.uk
authors.forename: Finbarr
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Hayes