Biophysical Society Newsletter | August 2017

6

2017

BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER

AUGUST

Biophysical Journal Know the Editors Dimitrios Stamou University of Copenhagen Editor, Membranes

convolution of multiple competing processes (active, inactive, and leaky functional states). These states turned out to be of crucial biological importance, because they appear to underlie the regulation of transport, in analogy to the open/ closed states of ion channels. Q. Who would you like to sit next to at a dinner party? Anyone who is at peace with themselves. I consider this to be the most precious commod- ity, plus it’s contagious. Why Publish in BJ ? If you submit your work to Biophysical Journal , here is what you can expect: • Rapid turnaround times • No page limits • Rigorous and constructive peer review by working scientists • Affordable publication fees with discounts for BPS members • Author friendly pre-print policy • Policies that promote transparency and data sharing • Hybrid journal with Open Access and licensing options • Publisher deposits to Pub Med; compliance with federal agency policies

Dimitrios Stamou

Q. What are you currently working on that excites you?

We have been studying the physical shape or curvature of cellular membranes. I am really excited about this line of research because it turns out curvature is affecting all physical properties of membranes and membrane-associated pro- teins that we have studied to date. Consequently, dynamic modulation of membrane curvature is emerging as a pluripotent modus operandi for regulating cellular membrane biology. Q. What has been your most exciting discovery as a biophysicist? I got my PhD from an engineering school in Lausanne, in the group of Horst Vogel . Those years had a formative influence on my approach to science, so as a PI I always tried to engineer new tools or methods, but now it is for the sake of gaining new insights to fundamental properties of biological systems. The single most important method we have developed to date is a novel way to record ionic currents that so far has a sensitivity about one mil- lion times greater than the gold standard method of patch clamp. This method enabled us to resolve, for the first time, the attoampere currents mediated by single transporters. The first system we investigated was a homologue of the Na+, K+ ATPase which consumes up to 70 percent of ATP in the brain. The key discovery we made here was that ensemble average transport is a non-trivial

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