Brain POU-er.

Developmental coordination is vital in the temporally coordinated appearance of cell types within the precise spatial architecture of the vertebrate brain and this, combined with the rich interplay between the developing brain and its target organs, is a biological problem of monumental complexity. An example is the genesis and subsequent integration of the neuroendocrine hypothalamus and the pituitary. Two recent papers use the developing hypothalamo-pituitary axis in order to gather a deeper understanding of these integrative mechanisms. In addition, they show that a sub-family of homeodomain factors, the POU-domain proteins, play a critical role in coordinating the respective ontogenies of the hypothalamus and the pituitary.