A Year of Progress

Abstract

Issue 1 Issue 2 Issue 3 Issue 4 Issue 5 Issue 6 Since its inception in 1908 Experimental Physiology has always strived to act as a forum for cutting edge research dealing with the physiology of systems. Throughout the past century there have been a number of outstanding breakthrough papers that we intend to highlight in a special publication by The Physiological Society in the near future. In last year's editorial we explained the redefined focus of Experimental Physiology Translation and Integration, following the themes of genes and function, and translational studies, with emphasis on cutting edge, experimental research. We have made huge strides in 2004 towards achieving this goal, with some wonderful papers illustrating our new commitment to these new topics. We also welcomed new Editors to the Board to help us achieve these ambitions – David Eisner covering the area of Heart/Cardiac Muscle, Neil Simmons covering Renal Physiology and Clive Coen covering Neuroencrinology/Endocrinology. The theme was introduced in an exceptional and well argued critique of the use of genetics and functional genomics to understand the basis of physiological function and dysfunction. This attracted a great deal of interest. The review by Denis Noble and Peter Hunter, two of our consultant editors, and their colleagues (Crampin et al. Exp Physiol 89, 1-26) explains why and how integrative physiology is central to the interpretation of genomic and proteomic data. Over the year other stimulating reviews have appeared, such as that by Recordati and Bellini (Exp Physiol pp.27-38) on a definition of homeostasis using the principles of non equilibrium thermodynamics. A similarly thought-provoking discussion of the role of arterial baroreceptors in the control of blood pressure was initiated in a review by Terry Thrasher (Exp Physiol pp.331-337) with critical commentaries from John Dickenson (pp. 335-337), and Peter Sleight (pp. 337-341). It was encouraging to see the interest this received and we intend to repeat this style of interactive discussion with other highly topical areas in 2005. Other topics have included feeding or appetite from leading authorities in the field, Graham Dockray (Exp Physiol pp.229-236), Kevin Murphy and Steve Bloom (Exp Physiol pp.507-516). An equally active area of current interest is the role of feedback and feed forward mechanisms in the cardiovascular response to muscle exercise and an update of recent contributions is provided in a Hot Topic by James Fisher and Mike White (Exp Physiol pp.639-646). These and other reviews like that on respiratory neurones by James Duffin (Exp Physiol pp.517-530), which we are able to publish quickly, are a source for the most recent articles and of current thinking in the most topical and fast moving areas of integrative physiology. Many of these reviews embrace the use of classical physiology with modern molecular approaches, and this is particularly evident in a review of current studies into the protein structure of ligand gated ion channels (Exp Physiol pp.145-154). Here Nathan Absalom, Trevor Lewis and Peter Schofield attempt to show how this knowledge is fundamental to the process of neurotransmission and hence is relevant to understanding complex physiological phenotypes. We are grateful to our new Hot Topics editor Rod Dimaline, and Julian Paton for initiating and commissioning these articles, and over the next year aim to cover more emerging and exciting topics. Of course Experimental Physiology is more than a forum for topical reviews. The year has seen 68 research reports published, fairly evenly covering all our categories of research and this represents about 40% of the papers submitted. We are pleased to have received papers from 39 countries with many contributors from the US. The journal is now advised by a team of consultant editors who are amongst the most distinguished scientists in their respective fields. In 2005 we will be introducing themed issues. One of these will be on computational physiology and modelling and another on cardiovascular genomics. The journal will of course continue to publish original research articles in all of its current areas, incorporating the themes of genes and function. We hope you will see that Experimental Physiology provides a highly accessible forum for state of the art studies in integrative and translational research and you will send your best research reports to us so we can fulfil our mission and embrace the philosophy of Pascal. ‘I hold it equally impossible to know the parts without knowing the whole and to know the whole without knowing the parts in detail’.