Biophysical Journal 60 Years after Hodgkin-Huxley

Abstract

We will identify articles that are most enthusiastically refereed and ask reviewers or editors to write short perspectives on the impact of these articles on their field. These short contributions can cite other work in addition to the newly published article and should be of particular value to the nonspecialist reader.Additionally, you can expect to see increasingly rich content in the electronic version of Biophysical Journal. Authors and readers may not even be aware that PDB molecular structures are already displayed and manipulated in 3D on the ScienceDirect site, available through institutional subscriptions now and to all Biophysical Society members next spring. This feature makes use of the open source Jmol web tool (http://jmol.sourceforge.net/); see, for example, Buhrow et al. (2xFrom static structure to living protein: computational analysis of cytochrome c oxidase main-chain flexibility. Buhrow, L., Ferguson-Miller, S., and Kuhn, L.A. Biophys. J. 2012; 102: 2158–2166Abstract | Full Text | Full Text PDF | PubMed | Scopus (13)See all References2), one of five articles with interactive protein structures in the May 2, 2012, issue of Biophysical Journal. Likewise, movies and animations will be embedded in the article just like figures. These technologies have been adopted individually by more specialized journals, but Biophysical Journal will give authors and readers access to both. Additionally, Biophysical Journal will support MATLAB .FIG files, so that data can be interactively visualized and all the original data can be accessed; you should see the first articles to use this technology in the next few months. In the longer term, Biophysical Journal will implement technologies to visualize complex multidimensional images and simulations. Ultimately, we hope to give readers interactive features that will allow them to access and reanalyze data sets from both experiments and models. And a Biophysical Journal app for your iPad is slated to be released this fall!Our biophysics community is accumulating data on the structure and dynamics of macromolecules; the detailed mechanisms of membrane channels and transporters; spatiotemporal molecular distributions in cells down to the level of single molecules; mechanics at the molecular, organelle, cell, and tissue levels; and the kinetics of cell signaling and gene regulatory networks. These are the pieces of the puzzle of how cells and organisms function. The next challenge is to marshal the physics and physical chemistry that will allow us to put the puzzle pieces together. Biophysics is by definition multidisciplinary; therefore it is precisely the field that spans molecular, cell, organ, and systems biology. I look forward to working with the authors and readers of Biophysical Journal as we build those bridges.