Two studies in Developmental Cell report the generation of mice with longer and shorter than normal tails, respectively, giving insight into developmental programmes and key genes involved in mouse tail development.

D’Amico et al. show that, in the presence of oncogenic RAS mutations, STAT3 acts as a tumour modifier by regulating the epithelial differentiation of pancreatic and lung cancer cells via p63.

With the emergence of increasingly potent androgen deprivation therapy, rates of treatment-emergent small-cell neuroendocrine prostate cancer are increasing. In a recent prospective study, Aggarwal and colleagues defined the frequency and clinical and genomic characteristics of these tumours.

A study in Nature describes RNA velocity, which is a computational method to derive dynamic gene expression information from static single-cell RNA sequencing data. It provides valuable insights into developmental trajectories of cells.

A study in Science reports the successful application of CRISPR–Cas genome editing to track and reconstruct developmental lineages in the mouse.