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Kiss and run and Festivus for the rest of us...
By Crobar in Neurognosis
December 18, 2007

I have my pole ready to put up in the living room, a long list of grievances to air and I've been working out in preparation for the feats of strength.  Yes folks, it's that time of year again, time for Festivus.  Time to shine that pole.

So...did ya know that there were two popular competing theories for vesicular recycling at neuronal synapses?  Well there are, you'll just have to take my word for it.  One of the popular theories and one which seemed logical to most was nicknamed the "kiss and run" theory.  It proposed that a vesicle would fuse with the membrane, release its contents and then reform and go on its merry way to be reused.  Well, along come a couple of scientific upstarts from the Weill Cornell Medical College to squash that theory.  They utilized fluorescence tagging to follow vesicles and watch them work in real time.  What they found was that the vesicles definitely didn't kiss and run.  The vesicles fused with the membrane then would breakdown.  They have to be rebuilt by enzymes in the cell to be used again.  The researchers published their findings in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Now, when you're shining that pole and drink that nice cup of eggnog and it tastes so good, remember the poor vesicles.

Happy Holidays Folks.