Li-Huei Tsai: I well remember

C dk5 is a kinase expressed mainly in neurons, where it helps regulate the activity of a whole host of downstream targets, including ion channels and synaptic scaffold proteins. Thus, it's perhaps to be expected that Cdk5 dysregulation is associated with many neuropathologies (1). Li-Huei Tsai cloned Cdk5 as a post-doc (2) and decided she wanted to study it further in her own lab. When asked during job interviews what she would do if Cdk5 wasn't involved in any interesting phenotypes , she replied that she would no doubt fi nd something else interesting to study. She was soon hired on at Harvard. As it turns out, though, Cdk5 (and its regulation) is plenty interesting (3–5), as we learned when we called her at her current lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Was there something from your childhood that infl uenced your career? I was born and raised in Taiwan. My parents were in debt when they fi rst got married, so I lived with my maternal grandmother while they worked in another city. I was very close to my grandma. One of my strongest memories is that, while we were walking back from the market one morning, we took shelter from a thunderstorm at a bus stop. After the rain stopped, my grandmother was very confused, saying, " What are we doing here? " I said, " We were walking home from the market. " And she said, " Home? Where's home? " I was badly frightened. I had no idea what was going on. Later, I was told she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease around that time. That memory has had a huge infl uence on me. Did you want to be a scientist? No, that never occurred to me back then. I really enjoyed learning about science, but, growing up, I didn't have much opportunity to be exposed to research. When I went to college, I ended up in a veterinary school program, because I loved animals and I thought being a vet would be cool. Only during my last year in vet school did I notice that a few of our elder classmates actually went on to graduate school. That was the fi rst time I realized there were other career possibilities. After I graduated, I wanted to give myself an opportunity to get some new experiences. So rather than just rush into being a …