In the hallway outside of Rafa [Yuste]’s lab, I laid out a carpet of leaves and branches and snapped some shots of the stick, its branchlets, and the leafy background. Carlos Portera (now professor at UCLA)

showed me how to make the “sparks” on the branches that mimicked microdomains BIBF1120 in Photoshop and, voilà, we had our cover. —Jesse Goldberg Figure options Download full-size image Download high-quality image (83 K) Download as PowerPoint slideOur paper had just been accepted by Neuron and we were shooting around ideas for a cover illustration. We thought that getting the cover would be the icing on the cake, since it would be stapled to the front of each reprint. We first came up with a design depicting a turning road. While this idea seemed fitting at first, Neuron editors suggested to use a straight road instead and provided us with a sketch. In hindsight, this was the more obvious choice since we had spent hours and hours staring at a pair of axons that run along each side of the worm’s ventral midline, looking for gene mutations that disrupted the pattern of these perfectly parallel fluorescent lines. As soon as they looked at this drawing, Ribociclib cell line Hannes and Thomas remembered the picture taken

more than two years before during Thomas’s first American road trip, to Bryce Canyon, Utah. This is how a short, beautiful, and deserted stretch of Utah 12 between Panguish and Bryce Canyon ended up on the cover of Neuron. —Thomas Boulin, Hannes Bülow, and Oliver Hobert Figure options Download full-size image Download high-quality image (45 K) Download as PowerPoint slideThe process of retrieving synaptic vesicles from the plasma membrane is to some extent similar to the formation of bubbles when one blows in a soap bubble wand. The

ring of the blower can be compared to the function of dynamin, a protein that is required for the fission of the vesicle from the plasma membrane. 4-Aminobutyrate aminotransferase Patrik Verstreken and his wife, Nancy Van Driessche, were having brunch in Herman Park when they noticed two boys frantically blowing bubbles and trying to pop them. They thought of the parallel with synaptic vesicle retrieval and asked the parents if they could borrow the bubble wand. While Nancy was blowing—her hand is on the cover—Patrik was trying to capture just the right bubble with his camera. They took numerous pictures, as the wind did not make matters easy. In his zeal, Patrik knocked over the soap container. “One of the kids was not very happy,” said Patrik, “but we made up by playing soccer with them. Clearly, I was out of shape and I can’t exactly remember the score, but it didn’t matter because I was happy with the result of our impromptu photo shoot.” —Hugo Bellen and Patrik Verstreken Figure options Download full-size image Download high-quality image (69 K) Download as PowerPoint slideWhen our manuscript was accepted in 2006, I encouraged all my students who might have art talent to design a cover.