Educators play an important role in developing the minds and brains of their learners. Little wonder then, that most have a natural enthusiasm to learn about concepts from neuroscience and apply them in their classrooms. Such enthusiasm may be fundamentally misplaced if neuroscience can make no practical contribution to education. Yet many areas of practical educational concern are being inform...

Is membrane fusion an essentially passive or an active process? It could be that fusion proteins simply need to pin two bilayers together long enough, and the bilayers could do the rest spontaneously. Or, it could be that the fusion proteins play an active role after pinning two bilayers, exerting force in the bilayer in one or another way to direct the fusion process. To distinguish these alte...

Y ears ago, when I was just starting out in my profession and eager to prove myself competent and capable, one of my mentors quoted to me the old saying, “People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Over the years, I have found this statement to be more than just a play on words. In my work with family medicine residents, I have observed via video monitor countless...

In both prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms, repressors and activators are responsible for regulating gene expression. The lac operon is a paradigm for understanding how metabolites function as signaling molecules and modulate transcription. These metabolites or allosteric effector molecules bind to the repressor and alter the conformational equilibrium between the induced and the repressed st...