Liu et al. found that the translocation of HMGB1 from the cytoplasm to the nucleus increased in acute liver failure (Wang et al., 2008; Liu and Yao, 2010); overexpression of HMGB1 in hepatocytes also particularly enhanced the risk of liver injury when sepsis happened (Xu et al., 2014). Here, HMGB1 is linked to acute liver failure.