Abstract: Anne and Jack moved with Nancy Serrell into a larger apartment. Anne researched methods of measuring GABA and glycine receptors. She hypothesized that strychnine worked because it was bound to the glycine neurotransmitter receptor. If Anne was right, she would have discovered something new about the lock (receptor) for the key (glycine). Eventually, her experiments demonstrated that [3H]-strychnine would, in fact, bind to rat spinal cord membranes and could be blocked by glycine. Anne felt exhilarated by the experiments she conducted. Her success wasn’t met without competition with Candace Pert, who also succeeded with her research on the opiate receptor. Candace got attention because of how important the opiate receptor was as it dealt with pain, a common issue; Anne’s research on glycine and GABA did not impact the average healthy person. Jack was accepted for a neurology residency at UCSF, and Anne for medical internship at Mount Zion Hospital. A third of Anne’s thesis had to be rewritten after it was stolen from her briefcase when she was mugged. Young defended her thesis on the same day as Pert. They succeeded, but the committee asked Anne to take another year. She told Sol what happened. The next day, as promised, the head of the department changed his mind; she could graduate as expected.

Abstract: Anne officially finished her required clerkships in just nine months by the end of December 1971. After creating a combined MD and PhD degree, she officially became the first MD/PhD graduate student to work in Sol Snyder’s lab. The combined degree program provided tools to work at the interface between basic research and clinical patient care. Throughout Anne’s time at Johns Hopkins, she noticed a certain type of confidence the male students had, even if they were inaccurate. Sol put Anne on a project to determine whether homocarnosine was a neurotransmitter. Anne was hit by a car. She was in the ER and eventually the ICU due to fat emboli. The senior neurologist at Johns Hopkins told Jack that Anne had a 25–50 percent chance of survival. She was given large doses of steroids and survived. Within five weeks of her accident, Anne was back at the lab. Her enthusiasm for the homocarnosine project had waned because it was unlikely to be a neurotransmitter. Anne met fellow graduate student Candace Pert. Their lab benches were across from one another. Pert discovered a new method to measure opiate receptors in the brain.