Alternative path to EMT: regulation of apicobasal polarity in Drosophila.

The epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT), a key process in morphogenesis, is often driven by repressing expression of adherens junction components, such as E-cadherin. In this issue of Developmental Cell, Campbell et al. (2011) uncover an alternative mechanism in the Drosophila embryonic gut that promotes EMT via Serpent, a GATA transcriptional repressor of the apicobasal polarity gene crumbs.