Angelman Today January / February edition 2014 | Page 11

The gentleman in North Carolina had
designed one of those simply beautiful
experiments that I can now appreciate
as a neuroscience student. He used
dishes of cells from a genetically
engineered mouse that would glow
yellow only if the paternal Ube3a was
turned on. Then, he poured a selection
of 2000 known neuroactive medications
and compounds onto the cells and
waited to see which ones would glow. I
imagine him grabbing the plate with one
yellow well from a naive undergraduate
student and shouting, “Eureka!”. Or
maybe he simply figured it was a
mistake and sent the poor beleaguered
student back to the lab to repeat the
experiment until he was convinced by
the evidence. Amazingly,
unexpectedly, o