Losing a "nucleus" to gain a cytoplasm.

It has been known for more than 130 years that mammalian red cells lack a nucleus and, thus, differ fundamentally from the red cells of fish, birds, and reptiles that maintain their nucleus caged in a network of intermediate filaments. However, the process of erythroblast enucleation has remained provocative and poorly understood.In this issue of Blood, Konstantinidis et al provide evidence that erythroblast enucleation is a more complex and multistep process than previously thought, involving sequential actions of tubulin and filamentous actin, as well as lipid raft formation