Choosing the road less traveled by: a ligand-receptor system that controls target recognition by Drosophila motor...

In this issue of Genes & Development, Siebert and colleagues (pp. 1052-1062) define a ligand-receptor system that controls motor axon guidance and target recognition in the Drosophila embryo. The beaten path (beat) and sidestep (side) genes were known to be important regulators of motor axon guidance. Siebert and colleagues now show that Beat and Side are cell surface proteins that physically interact with each other, and that Beat-expressing motor axon growth cones reach their targets via recognition of Side-expressing pathways.