What are the circumstances which led you to your work?

I wrote this review to synthesize the emerging data in the field, especially to communicate the concept that proteins such as SNARE, Munc18, and synaptotagmin have to work hand-in-hand in order to effect neurotransmitter release.

  How would you describe the significance of this work for your field?

I believe that, as a review, this paper provided a service: it allowed people to connect different results, and see them as a whole. Innumerable reviews are written in a field that are often progress reports of a laboratory; this review—at least I think so—provided a real assessment.

  Where has this research gone since the publication of your paper? Where do you see it going 10 years from now?

I would like to comment here primarily on my own work, because I feel that this is work I can assess best. I think the review stimulated our experiments that demonstrated that synaptotagmin 1 is indeed the calcium sensor for fast neurotransmitter release. This, in my view, is a big part of a major problem in neurobiology—how is it possible for calcium to trigger release so quickly?—and has led us to enter a new field, the question of the molecular basis for the modulation of release by external signals and experience in a synapse.

  What lessons would you draw from your work to share with the next generation of researchers?

I would rather comment on what lessons I feel are the most important now for the practice of science. This is that we have to remember that data are the primary currency of science, that the claim of "function" in a study must be related to the data directly and not be an attached claim. The major journals are now populated by relatively simple experiments that are interpreted with extravagant conclusions. My advice would be: look at what is actually measured, what is observed in real terms, not at what the authors claim this means. For example, transient transfection studies in PC12 cells claim to delineate the fusion pore—the next generation should be more skeptical of any conclusions that refer to processes which are not really measured, and become concerned when the same result is obtained with many different molecules (e.g., many proteins transfected into PC12 cells alter the "fusion pore"). I believe we need a higher standard of reviewing where papers are not graded based on how exciting the associated claims are, but how solid the data are—this is what counts in the end.