I’m going to be partial with this one, because I enjoy reading about neural crest development. But I thought that this paper by Carmona-Fontaine et al., in a December issue of Nature, was a pleasure both for the eyes and the mind. The movies in the Supplementary information nicely complete the text, which to me was pretty clear throughout.

For quibbles, I would take exception to this sentence from the abstract: “However, the molecular basis of contact inhibition of locomotion and whether it also occurs in vivo are still unknown.” My opinion is that it did not add anything to the paper, even to dispel doubts about the novelty of the work.

“It is tempting to speculate that…” is also an undesirable phrase, though it leads into “To determine whether this is true…”. I would prefer something along the lines of “We tested the plausible hypothesis that…”

I am glad the authors used the colorful phrase “crawled on top of one another” and did not try to make it sound more distant in some way. Also, the use of “tip-toe” in the sum-up works well for me, although the sentence is a little awkward:

“Their typical coherent directional migration is accomplished through a ‘tip-toe’ movement in which front cells can move only towards the NC-free zone; that is, forwards. This opens a little space where trailing cells move, and so on (Supplementary Fig. 1).”

Kudos to the scientists and the editors who brought this one to a wide readership. If you would like to write me offsite to discuss the paper for any reason, feel free.