The people behind the papers – Danielle Spitzer and Iswar Hariharan

Neighbouring cells have a huge influence on one another in the developing epithelia, but the role of cell-cell adhesion molecules in context-dependent neighbour interactions remains unclear. In a new study, Spitzer and colleagues investigated the role of adhesion molecule Echinoid (Ed) in mutant clone growth in the Drosophila wing disc and its effect on overall organ size, revealing differences in mutant cell behaviour depending on whether their neighbours were mutant or wild type. To find out more, we spoke to first author Danielle Spitzer and corresponding author Iswar Hariharan, Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, USA.