An undergraduate student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has learned very quickly that a spoonful of sugar really does help the medicine go down. In fact, with his invention, the sugar may actually be the medicine. Among the most important and complex molecules in the human body, sugars control not just metabolism but also how cells communicate with one another. Graduating senior Jeffery Martin has put his basic knowledge of sugars to exceptional use by creating a lab-on-a-chip device that builds complex, highly specialized sugar molecules, mimicking one of the most important cellular structures in the human body — the Golgi Apparatus.
