I went and reviewed my CV recently, and I've had about 60 students in my lab. Postdocs, predocs, undergrads, and they've all done really well, almost all. There was something like 20 went on to become chairs of departments or directors of project programs if there were no departments in their school. So I'm very proud of that and I think a lot of that began in those early days at the NIH. My confidence that grew when I saw my first synaptic events. That was a highlight.

We went on at the NIH to study the biophysics of the receptors, to study exactly how the muscle cells form when receptors first appear. And the key to subsequent studies was what happens when a synapse forms between the growing nerve axon and the muscle. We found that ACh receptors accumulated at that point of contact.

The interesting thing was they didn't accumulate all along the axon muscle contact, which was quite extensive, but we were able to show with a very talented postdoc named Eric Frank and Steve Schuetze and Steve Cohen, that these peaks of acetylcholine sensitivity occurred right at sites of transmitter release, the new synapse. That was the first clue I had that there's something going on at the synapse, which promotes the accumulation of ACh receptors. That subsequently led to attempts to purify factors from the spinal cord and brain, which promoted the accumulation of receptors.