In a new study in Nature, Brandeis University Howard Hughes Medical Investigator Dr. Dorothee Kern and collaborators pull back the curtain on the secret lives of enzymes, the ubiquitous proteins that catalyze chemical reactions in the cell. Harnessing a slew of sophisticated technologies to capture a key enzyme changing shape in near real time, Kern was able to show that these proteins are not the wallflowers of the biological world scientists had once thought, essentially passive until catalysis occurs. Rather, Kern and her team demonstrated that the enzyme adenylate kinase, and presumably many more, engages in a dynamic dance even before its catalytic date–the substrate to which it binds–shows up.