Although previous studies in myogenesis [22] and cancer [29, 30, 32, 33] have reported an anti-apoptotic role for Dyrk1B, here we observed that Dyrk1B overexpression increases the naturally occurring apoptosis during SC development in the MN domain, suggesting that Dyrk1B function in cell survival is tissue-and/or context-dependent. Here, DYRK1B is linked to cancer.