The Only Constant Is Change

Abstract

Ten years ago, the first announcements went out that Cell Press would launch a new journal bringing cell biology and development together. At the time, we hoped that Developmental Cell could provide a niche for interdisciplinary studies. It has been a great pleasure over the years to see how the developmental and cell biology communities have responded to the research opportunities at the interface between these two fields and to the journal itself. Deborah Sweet and I have worked together on Developmental Cell since before its first issue was published, and under her leadership as Editor, the journal has grown to provide just the service we had hoped. Debbie now has new responsibilities within Cell Press, and I am happy to be stepping into the role of Editor of Developmental Cell. I thought I would take this opportunity to reintroduce you to the editorial team and talk a bit about our plans for the future.An interdisciplinary journal should of course have an interdisciplinary editorial group. The varied interests and expertise represented in Developmental Cell's Editorial Board of advisors reflect that ethos, as do the backgrounds of the in-house editors who run the journal. Before arriving at Cell Press in 2000, I worked with Hazel Sive, studying vertebrate ectodermal patterning. Marie Bao joined the Developmental Cell team in September of 2009. She came to us from Hiten Madhani's lab, followed by a year's stint at Cell's Leading Edge; her experience with chromatin and with signaling crosstalk and specificity has proven a great asset to the journal. I hope you have had a chance to meet Marie, perhaps at the annual ASCB meeting in December or at last month's Keystone symposium on epithelial plasticity. Later this month, Anne Knowlton, who has worked with Trisha Davis and Todd Stukenberg, will become the newest member of the editorial group. We look forward to seeing how Anne's expertise in microtubule dynamics and mitotic regulation will further enrich the team. Each of the three editors brings a different perspective to Developmental Cell, and we all share the same excitement for its interdisciplinary goals.Developmental Cell serves research communities that are themselves very attuned to dynamics and change, from immediate alterations in vesicular trafficking during signal transduction, to the transgenerational rewiring of transcriptional networks that ultimately influences the evolution of developmental processes. The approaches used to study these questions are also in a state of flux. Advances in genomics, imaging, genetics, biomechanics, and systems biology are changing the nature of the research you see in our pages, and we are excited to see how these new technologies are helping the field and the journal to grow. In addition, all Cell Press journals are working to enhance the ways we present articles online. Last year's introduction of the “Article of the Future” and of new, more constructive guidelines for supplemental materials (see http://www.cell.com/developmental-cell/supplemental_information_guide) are both part of an ongoing process. This year, in honor of Developmental Cell's 10th anniversary, we introduced new features on our homepage, celebrating some of the work we have published over the years. So a great deal of the change here at Developmental Cell will continue to be driven by biological dynamics, by new research methods, and by continuing efforts to make the most of online communication.Ten years ago, research that truly bridged the gap between “in vivo cell biology” and “mechanistic studies of developmental biology” was relatively rare. Today, those arbitrary dividing lines have been erased, and it is now commonplace to think about how chromosomal dynamics and subnuclear compartmentalization control gene expression, how regulating endocytosis affects cell adhesion and migration, or how signal transduction influences cell polarity and vice versa. Seeing the original interdisciplinary intent of Developmental Cell fulfilled, with such an exciting new synthesis, I feel very fortunate to have spent the past ten years helping the papers we published to reach the broad audience of developmental and cell biologists that they deserve. Technological opportunities—to enhance both the progress of scientific research and the effective presentation and analysis of information online—will only increase during the next ten years. I hope you will enjoy watching the results unfold as much as I will.