Your heart hammers at a sudden shock, yet the adrenaline behind it never enters a single heart cell. So how does a molecule drifting in the blood change what a cell does from the outside? This question sits at the root of how your body works, and its answer won the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Curious readers who enjoy science, medicine, and big ideas will be hooked.

Follow Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka as they make invisible receptors visible with radioactive tracers, hunt down their genes, and finally photograph one in action at atomic detail. Discover the molecular switch that turns on at the cell membrane and the seven-helix design shared by vision, smell, taste, and hormones. Learn why roughly a third of our medicines, from beta blockers to painkillers, aim at this single family.

Written in the compact, clear spirit of the Very Short Introductions, this book needs no scientific background. Everyday analogies, vivid scenes from the laboratory, and one running example, adrenaline, guide you from the first fright to the frontiers of drug design. It is a brisk, satisfying tour of one of biology's most important ideas.

The Signal Switch

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