About 15 years ago, a group of researchers discovered mutant zebrafish. The eyes of these zebrafish did not develop correctly, resulting in significantly smaller eyes than those of wild zebrafish. Now, one of these researchers—Prof. Ichiro Masai—who leads the Developmental Neurobiology Unit at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST), alongside his former Ph.D. student Dr. Swathy Babu, has used this mutation to understand the role of a protein in preventing cell death. This could have vast implications for the development of cancer therapy and for understanding how the cell cycle is regulated.