This month’s Editor’s choice is from Irene Zohn's group. They identify the ubiquitin ligase HECTD1 as a novel modulator of retinoic acid signalling, providing a model for the complex interactions in aortic arch development.  

At a Glance - Generating mouse models for biomedical research: technological advances

Newer molecular technologies to precisely and efficiently manipulate the mammalian genome are enabling the production of more scientifically valuable animal models, show Channabasavaiah Gurumurthy and Kent Lloyd in this poster.

In this Review Abraham Acevedo-Arozena and team compare two key types of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) mouse models: transgenic mice and those that express genes at physiological levels.

Have you seen our interviews with the early-career first authors of our papers? The authors talk about their work in and out of the lab, the journeys that led them to where they are now and the scientists who inspired them along the way. Recently, we caught up with Piotr Soczewka.

Call for papers – A guide to using neuromuscular disease models for basic and preclinical studies

We invite you to submit original research for a Special Collection focused on neuromuscular disease models, edited by Annemieke Aartsma-Rus, James Dowling and Maaike van Putten. The collection will showcase studies on the dysregulation of pathways, disease progression, approaches to treat and modify disease course in animal models, technologies for studying muscle pathophysiology and regeneration, and advances in the development of suitable in vitro and in vivo models. Submission deadline: 3 June 2019.

DMM aims to promote human health by encouraging collaboration between basic and clinical researchers, covering a diverse range of diseases, approaches and models. Our Editors are all active researchers in the field – your peers, colleagues and mentors, who know how much work has gone into every paper. DMM offers format-free submission and accepts peer review reports from other journals, making submission as easy as possible for our authors. Send us your next great paper – publish with us and you'll be in good company.

preLights - Mechanical stretch kills transformed cancer cells

Joseph Thottacherry highlights a recent preprint from Michael Sheetz and colleagues, who test the importance of forces in selective apoptosis of cancer cells and the mechanisms regulating these. They find cancer cells are extremely sensitive to mechanoptosis.