Prions were a major field of study in yeast, but no one had identified a normal function of these proteins until Kausik’s discovery of the novel form of CPEB in neurons. Thus his discovery not only offered deep new insights into learning and memory, it broke new ground in biology. We soon found that in the sensory neurons of the gill-withdrawal reflex, the conversion of CPEB from the inactive, non-propagating form to the active, propagating form is controlled by serotonin, the transmitter that is required for converting short- to long-term memory (figure 19–4). In its self-perpetuating form,
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