A team of researchers at Stanford University, working with two colleagues from Fudan University and another from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, has found evidence suggesting that genetic variants that dampen A-to-I RNA editing can be associated with an increased risk of autoimmune disorders. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes how they analyzed genetic expression data from tissue samples collected from hundreds of human donors to identify genetic variants that affect RNA editing and what they learned by doing so. Kaur Alasoo, with the University of Tartu in Estonia, has published a News & Views piece in the same journal issue outlining the work done by the team on this new effort.