Biophysical Society Newsletter - December 2014

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BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER

2014

DECEMBER

Biophysical Journal Corner

Know the Editors Andrew Plested

the manuscript and should appear just before the “Acknowledgements” section or, if there are no acknowledgements, just before the “References.” This text should describe the contributions of each author, designated by initials. Authors are to indicate their specific contribu- tions to submitted work. Examples of designa- tions an author could report include the fol- lowing: designed research; performed research; contributed analytic tools; analyzed data; or wrote the paper. An author may list more than one contribution, and more than one author may have contributed to the same aspect of the work. If a manuscript does not include this informa- tion when submitted, it will be returned to the authors with a request to add the paragraph, or the authors may be queried for the information at the proof stage. Biophysical Journal Special Issue: Focus on Quantitative Cell Biology Edited by David W. Piston , Associate Editor for Cell Biophysics, Biophysical Journal This first special issue published by Biophysical Journal highlights a broad range of biophysical approaches applied to mechanistic questions in cell biology and celebrates the growth of quanti- tative cell biology research and techniques used in today’s labs. In addition to 23 original research papers, the is- sue features reviews from the Sheetz, Pollard , and Danuser labs, and the first article in the Journal’s new feature called “Computational Tools.” Six New and Notable articles highlight and discuss work presented in this issue of the Journal and in the multi-disciplinary field of cell biophysics in general. Visit http://www.cell.com/biophysj/home.

Leibniz-Institut für Molekulare Pharmakologie

Editor for Channels and Transporters Section

Andrew Plested

My research interest lies in ion channels that are activated by neurotransmitters. In my lab we al- most exclusively work on the excitatory glutamate receptor, which is found at fast synapses through- out the brain. We are interested in these receptors because they are heavily involved in cognition and learning. In the past I did a lot of mathematical modelling of the kinetics of inhibitory glycine receptors, and I was once a physicist, so I am always keen to be quantitative when I think about biology. We are asking questions such as: How is the receptor composed? How does the binding of small molecules open a distant gate for ions in the membrane? How do the different pieces of the receptor work together? We attack these questions with various electrophysiological methods includ- ing fast solution exchange and single-channel recording. Some people in the lab crystallize parts of the receptor to help us build molecular models of activation states. If we are fortunate, we can put the data we obtain toward computational simula- tions (either molecular or kinetic) to give us a syn- optic view of what is happening. Recently, with the help of colleagues, we have become involved in more advanced molecular biology and opti- cal methods, such as photoactivatable unnatural amino acids and fluorescence studies of activation. Change to Biophysical Journal Instructions for Authors In order to increase transparency in research, authors are now asked to include an “Author Contributions” section in their submitted manu- script. This should be a separate subhead within