The Hitchhiker's Guide Across a Waddington's Landscape of Melanoma

Melanoma evolution may recapitulate the embryonic development of its progenitor tissue, neural crest (NC), but the exact process is unclear. In a recent issue of Nature, Karras et al. (2022) demonstrate that melanoma expansion mirrors the hierarchic process of NC differentiation, generating cell subpopulations, each with distinct function, including growth and metastasis.