E2F and Cell Survival: Context Really is Key

Our understanding of roles for the E2F transcription factor in regulating apoptosis has progressed from asking what E2F can do based on overexpression studies to what E2F actually does based on analyses of loss-of-function mutants. A paper in this issue of Developmental Cell implicates Drosophila E2F1 in context-dependent pro- as well as anti-apoptotic roles in the same tissue following genotoxic stress