Neurobiology and molecular biology: The second encounter

As this Symposium illustrates, the recent application of molecular genetics to cellular neurobiology is gener-ating a great deal of excitement. Although this excite-ment is in many ways unique, for many of us who have been working in neurobiology it is accompanied by a sense of d6ja vu. The sense that we have been here before is accurate, since this present contact between neurobiology and molecular biology is in fact the sec-ond, not the first, encounter between the two disci-plines. To put into perspective the recent impact of molecular genetics on neurobiology, I will divide this summary into two parts. I will begin with some com-ments about the first encounter--the istorical origins of the relationship between molecular biology and neural science viewed from a personal and obviously limited perspective. These origins set the tradition that has culminated in this Symposium. Second, I will use the issues raised by this Symposium to highlight he major themes emerging in contemporary molecular neurobiology. Although in this summary I restrict cita-tions mostly to the papers of this volume, I use these papers as a starting point for considering other issues, which for brevity I will describe without further citation