Neurotransmitters have consequences. They initiate events that are critical to a healthy life, giving us the ability to move, to talk, to breathe, to think. But that’s if the neurotransmitters are getting it right and sending proper signals downstream to muscle cells, neurons or other cells. A new study reports that a mutation in a transcription factor that controls a neurotransmitter in the nematode C. elegans causes an imbalance in neuronal signaling that results in protein damage in target cells.