In the second it takes you to read these words, tens of thousands of vesicles in your optic nerves are released in sequence, opening tiny surface pores to pass chemical signals to the next cell down the line, telling your brain what you’re seeing and your eyes where to move. Thanks to two new studies – including one spearheaded by an undergraduate biochemistry student at Rice University and published online today by Nature Structural and Molecular Biology – scientists have defined the function of a key protein that nerve cells use to pass information quickly.
