We have described how knowledge of protein termini will facilitate this by setting boundaries to the search space and acting as biomarkers defining the functional state of a protein. In the near future this will lead to exiting new biological insights into cellular and disease processes at a systems level and help close the gap between genotypes and phenotypes. Papers of particular interest, published within the period of review, have been highlighted as: • of special interest This work was supported by grants of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research; the Canadian Breast Cancer Research Alliance; the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation; the Cancer Research

Society; a Canada Research Chair to C.M.O., the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research,

SCH727965 mw the Breast Cancer Society of Canada, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research to P.F.L. “
“Current Opinion in Chemical Biology 2014, 23:23–30 This review comes from a themed issue on Molecular immunology Edited by Marcus Groettrup and Huib Ovaa For a complete overview see the Issue and the Editorial Available online 15th September 2014 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cbpa.2014.08.013 1367-5931/© 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/). The incidence of autoimmune and autoinflammatory disorders is rapidly increasing in developed countries

[1]. Addressing this clinical need will require continued innovation in immunomodulatory drug Erastin clinical trial development. Data from many sources, including analysis of how human genetic variation affects disease susceptibility, implicate aberrant cytokine production Niclosamide and signaling in the pathophysiology of these disorders (see Box 1 for background on the application of disease genetics to drug discovery). For example, mutations in the cellular machinery that processes the inflammatory cytokine interleukin-1β (IL-1β) to its mature form cause hereditary autoinflammatory diseases known as cryopyrin disorders (Figure 1a) [2]. Protein therapies inhibiting IL-1β (canakinumab; rilonacept) or its receptor (anakinra) are used to treat cryopyrin disorders, as well as immune disorders with more complex etiologies, including gout, type-2 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and chronic granulomatous disease [3 and 4]. The clinical success of biopharmaceuticals targeting IL-1β or other cytokines (TNF-α, IL-6, IL-12/23) derives from their ability to disrupt protein–protein interactions with exquisite selectivity and predictable, long-lasting pharmacology [5•]. The study of human genetics can uncover factors that contribute to the initiation and maintenance of disease, and suggest new strategies for therapeutic intervention.