The three cycles of cell division immediately following the formation of the cellular blastoderm during Drosophila embryogenesis display an invariant pattern. Bursts of transcription of a gene called string are required and sufficient to trigger mitosis at this time during development. The activator of mitosis encoded by the string gene is a positive regulator of cdc2 kinase and a Drosophila homologue of the Saccharomyces pombe cdc25 tyrosine phosphatase. Evidence presented in a recent paper demonstrates that transcription of string, and hence the timing and pattern of mitosis in the postblastoderm embryo, is under complex developmental control. Several lines of evidence support this interpretation, including the analysis of string transcription in pattern formation mutants, cell cycle arrest mutants, and the preliminary characterization of an extensive cis-acting regulatory region.