The latest edition of Development’s ‘The people behind the papers’ series features Shubha Tole and Amrita Singh from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India. In their new study, Amrita, Shubha, and colleagues manipulate WNT signalling in mouse models to understand the impact on Cajal-Retzius cell fate, one of the first neuronal cell types to arise in the brain.