BRAIN POU-ER

Developmental coordination is vital in the temporally coordinated appe arance of cell types within the precise spatial architecture of the ve rtebrate brain and this, combined with the rich interplay between the developing brain and its target organs, is a biological problem of mon umental complexity. An example is the genesis and subsequent integrati on of the neuroendocrine hypothalamus and the pituitary. Two recent pa pers((1,2)) use the developing hypothalamo-pituitary axis in order to gather a deeper understanding of these integrative mechanisms. In addi tion, they show that a sub-family of homeodomain factors, the POU-doma in proteins, play a critical role in coordinating the respective ontog enies of the hypothalamus and the pituitary.