Given the elevated rate of apoptosis in cells expressing high levels of c-MYC (Evan et al., 1992) and evidence of significant apoptosis in B cell lymphoma tumours in Eμ-Myc mice (Park et al., 2005), we sought to determine whether the aberrant contractile force generation and consequent altered apoptotic morphological changes in Rock1 NC cells would affect B cell lymphoma induced by c-MYC. The gene discussed is MYC; the disease is B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma.