As most of us are aware, today's primary school, high school and undergraduate biology programs are struggling to incorporate even a fraction of the 'molecular revolution'of biological knowledge and technologies that surround us. In the first term alone, life science and biology classes of the new millennia routinely cover condensed versions of the year-long classes taught in the 60s, 70s and 80s. Teachers no longer have the luxury of spending half a year presenting Mendel and his peas.

Much work has explored animal-to-animal variability and compensation in ion channel expression. Yet, little is known regarding the physiological consequences of morphological variability. We quantify animal-to-animal variability in cable lengths (CV = 0.4) and branching patterns in the Gastric Mill (GM) neuron, an identified neuron type with highly-conserved physiological properties in the crustacean stomatogastric ganglion (STG) of \textitCancer borealis. We examined passive GM electrotonic structure by measuring the amplitudes and apparent reversal potentials (E\textsubscriptrevs) of inhibitory responses evoked with focal glutamate photo-uncaging in the presence of TTX. Apparent E\textsubscriptrevs were relatively invariant across sites (mean CV ± SD = 0.04 ± 0.01; 7–20 sites in each of 10 neurons), which ranged between 100–800 µm from the somatic recording site. Thus, GM neurons are remarkably electrotonically compact (estimated λ > 1.5 mm). Electrotonically compact structures, in consort with graded transmission, provide an elegant solution to observed morphological variability in the STG.

In this issue of Neuron, Rinberg et al. show that mice use a speed-accuracy tradeoff in odor discrimination. Shorter sampling results in high performance for easy problems, and enforced longer sampling results in higher accuracy for difficult problems, but mice freely choose intermediate sampling durations and accuracy varies with difficulty. Reward value and task requirements may determine sampling time choice and performance levels.

Fluorescence microscopy images should not be treated as perfect representations of biology. Many factors within the biospecimen itself can drastically affect quantitative microscopy data. Whereas some sample-specific considerations, such as photobleaching and autofluorescence, are more commonly discussed, a holistic discussion of sample-related issues (which includes less-routine topics such as quenching, scattering and biological anisotropy) is required to appropriately guide life scientists through the subtleties inherent to bioimaging. Here, we consider how the interplay between light and a sample can cause common experimental pitfalls and unanticipated errors when drawing biological conclusions. Although some of these discrepancies can be minimized or controlled for, others require more pragmatic considerations when interpreting image data. Ultimately, the power lies in the hands of the experimenter. The goal of this Review is therefore to survey how biological samples can skew quantification and interpretation of microscopy data. Furthermore, we offer a perspective on how to manage many of these potential pitfalls.

The activity of a handful of transcription factors, such as mammalian NF-B, Drosophila melanogaster Cubitus interruptus and yeast Spt23 and Mga2, are regulated through partial protein degradation by the proteasome. New data now show that the proteasome activates membrane-bound Spt23 and Mga2 by initiating their proteolysis at an internal site and then degrading the proteins bidirectionally toward both ends of the polypeptide chain, modifying our ideas on how the proteasome degrades targeted substrates.

Eyes may be 'the window to the soul' in humans, but whiskers provide a better path to the inner lives of rodents. The brain has remarkable abilities to focus its limited resources on information that matters, while ignoring a cacophony of distractions. While inspecting a visual scene, primates foveate to multiple salient locations, for example mouths and eyes in images of people, and ignore the rest. Similar processes have now been observed and studied in rodents in the context of whisker-based tactile sensation. Rodents use their mechanosensitive whiskers for a diverse range of tactile behaviors such as navigation, object recognition and social interactions. These animals move their whiskers in a purposive manner to locations of interest. The shapes of whiskers, as well as their movements, are exquisitely adapted for tactile exploration in the dark tight burrows where many rodents live. By studying whisker movements during tactile behaviors, we can learn about the tactile information available to rodents through their whiskers and how rodents direct their attention. In this primer, we focus on how the whisker movements of rats and mice are providing clues about the logic of active sensation and the underlying neural mechanisms.