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Nature 425, 469-470 (2 October 2003) | doi:10.1038/425469a

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Cell biology: The hippo hypothesis

Michael E. Rothenberg1 & Yuh-Nung Jan1

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The perfection of a fly's eye and the chaotic nature of tumours provide eloquent examples of the need to coordinate cell death and proliferation. The intricacies of the underlying mechanism are now being uncovered.

Just as the number of working parts in a machine is crucial, so too is the number of cells in a tissue. This means that the creation of new cells (by proliferation) and the elimination of excess ones (by programmed cell death, or 'apoptosis') must be tightly coordinated.

  1. Departments of Physiology and Biochemistry, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of California, San Francisco, California 94143-0725, USA.

Correspondence to: Yuh-Nung Jan1 Email: ynjan@itsa.ucsf.edu