Biophysical Society Bulletin | March 2018

Publications

Know the Editor Peter Tieleman

University of Calgary Editor, Membranes

Your Best Research Deserves to Be Published in the Best Journal: Think BJ This is the year to publish your research in Biophysical Journal . Here is why: • High-quality science; • Rapid turnaround times; • No page limits; • Rigorous and constructive peer review by working scientists; • Seven sections devoted to specific areas of biophysical research; • New rapid publication of Letters for important and timely information; • Affordable publication fees with discounts for BPSmembers; • Author friendly pre-print policy; • Policies that promote transparency and data sharing; • Hybrid journal with open access and licensing options; • Publisher deposits to PubMed; compliance with federal agency policies; • Broad focus, wide dissemination; • Easy submission with ORCID IDs; • Authors receive link to share their articles for 50 days; • Opportunities to have your work highlighted in cover art, sliders, video clips, news releases, the BPS Newsletter, andmore; and • Automatic consideration for the Paper of the Year Award.

Peter Tieleman

What has been your most exciting discovery as a biophysicist? The structure of transient defects in membranes and their role in a variety of biophysical processes. As graduate student I had implemented a method to apply a voltage in GROMACS and was playing around with water– octane interfaces, because phospholipid models were expen- sive to simulate. I thought the water defects that formed at high voltages and the effects of periodic boundary conditions (a simulation limitation) in this toy system were fascinating. This grew into studies on electroporation, discussions on membrane defects in voltage gating of potassium channels (irrelevant, it turned out after the dust settled), lipid flip flop and passive ion permeation, perturbation of membranes by antimicrobial peptides, the detailed thermodynamics of membrane pore formation, and possible roles in reversible membrane protein folding. What are you currently working on that excites you? Computer simulations have grown in power by about four orders of magnitude since my water–octane toy models. We are now working on membrane models with dozens of lipid species and many proteins, at different levels of detail. We can calculate the distribution of different lipids around proteins by simply simulating proteins in complex lipid mix- tures. This helps identify binding sites for specific lipids on proteins, but I think much weaker interactions that lead to the local enrichment or depletion near a protein of certain lipid types by maybe 10% or 20% are an important mechanism in determining membrane structure. These types of systems also make it possible to study how largely hydrophobic drugs target specific membrane proteins, and we are involved in some exciting collaborations in this area.

• New easy-to-use LaTex template • Direct submission from bioRxiv • New Figure360 option Submit at https:/ biophysj.msubmit.net

Submit to Biophysical Journal using the new Overleaf LaTeX template at https:/www.overleaf.com/articles/biophysical-journal-template/pxxcptphxdhv

March 2018

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