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Frank Bradke’s work on neuronal polarization began in a bathroom. Though the toilet had been removed, the small room at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, was still recognizable as a former restroom, Bradke says. But that didn’t stop the budding neuro-scientist from setting up his new inverted microscope and spending about three years in the room, watching organelle movement in developing neurons.
“And he never had a complaint,” recalls his PhD advisor Carlos Dotti, now at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. “He just cares about doing science. He can do experiments in the back yard, he wouldn’t care.”
METHOD: Bradke was interested in understanding why one of a developing neuron’s many small projections, called neurites, developed into the axon that ...
