Serotonin and insulin signaling team up to control growth in Drosophila.

Neuroendocrine signaling pathways play a central role in modulating animal body size in response to environmental signals. Little is known, however, regarding how these neuroendocrine circuits are controlled. An important advance in this area is reported in this issue of Genes & Development by Kaplan and colleagues (pp. 1877-1893), who show that serotonergic neurons regulate the growth of peripheral tissues in Drosophila through the insulin/IGF pathway.