Editorial pubs.acs.org/biochemistry
The New Biochemistry Editorial Team
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incredibly detailed understanding of brain biochemical processes. Research in Linda Hsieh-Wilson’s laboratory falls at the interface of chemistry and neurobiology and cuts deeply into fundamental questions about the brain. Her work involves carefully investigating the role of glycosaminoglycans in the brain, for example, learning how these species are involved in neuron regeneration after spinal cord injury. Hsieh-Wilson will handle all submissions whose focus is related to neurochemistry, post-translational protein modifications, and glycan-related enzymology. Hsieh-Wilson began her independent career at Caltech in 2000 and since that time has pioneered the creative application of chemical tools and insights to interrogate the roles of carbohydrates and protein glycosylation in neurobiology and cancer. Her many awards include the Beckman Young Investigator Award, the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award, and the Horace S. Isbel Award in Carbohydrate Chemistry. HsiehWilson is currently the Arthur and Marian Hanisch Memorial Professor of Chemistry at Caltech and in 2015 was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Hongwei Wang, Executive Editor, Tsinghua University. It is fair to say that one of the biggest challenges facing the biological science is establishing an atomic-level understanding of how molecular machines work. Therein lies the work of Hongwei Wang, whose group makes use of advanced cryoelectron microscopy tools to carefully map the structures of macromolecular complexes. With the structural blueprints so obtained in hand, Wang works to develop new macromolecular mechanistic insight. Wang received his Ph.D. from Tsinghua University and honed his skills at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a research scientist and as an Assistant Professor at Yale University before returning to Tsinghua University. During his career, Wang has been awarded the National Award of Natural Science (2nd Rank) and the Youth One-Thousand Talent Program by the State Council of China. Ulrike Eggert, Associate Editor, King’s College London. Cytokinesis, the final step of cell division, is fundamental to biological life. Despite this crucial importance, many details of this process remain unclear. Riki Eggert applies a diverse mix of chemical and cell biological approaches to study cytokinesis and reveal this mechanistic detail. Her lab seeks to peel back the complexity of cytokinesis to understand both the overall process and how it is regulated by both proteins and metabolites. She will handle all submissions relating to cellular biochemistry and the chemistry and biology of lipids. Eggert’s training and experience spans the globe. Her training began at the University of Mainz and Oxford and was followed by Ph.D. work at Princeton. Prior to joining the faculty at King’s College London, Eggert worked at Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. She has been
ast fall I wrote you with exciting news of initiatives to revitalize Biochemistry.1 Since that time we successfully rolled out new manuscript types (which I described in June2), streamlined the manuscript submission and review process, and began a campaign to bring more and broader attention to the journal. And, while I thought I would never say these words, that means you can even follow us on Twitter @ BiochemistryACS to learn of the latest updates and supernotable science! These initiatives are all important steps, but perhaps the most important was establishing an editorial team that was both unquestionably outstanding and at the same time reflective of the breadth that defines modern biological chemistry. The Biochemistry editorial team must span all walks of life, so to speak, with expertise in the chemistry and biochemistry of disease, neurochemistry, structural biology, cell biology, synthetic biology, biophysics, and mechanistic enzymology. Some of the individuals chosen will be familiar to you, as they are experienced Biochemistry editors; others we are welcoming for the first time. All have been and will continue to add to more than fifty years of scholarship and excellence at Biochemistry. Below I describe the science that makes each editor a terrific match for Biochemistry and provide a guide to the types of manuscripts that each will handle. You are welcomeindeed, encouragedto suggest a Biochemistry editor whose background best matches your science. Nathanael Gray, Executive Editor, Harvard University. While the basic mechanisms of cancer are increasingly well understood, new therapies based on these mechanisms have come slowly. Working to address this need and opportunity, Nathanael Gray works to develop first-in-class chemical inhibitors that identify, validate, and inhibit targets involved in cancer and other important diseases. He will handle all submissions that relate to disease, especially those that focus on the biochemistry of kinase function and cancer. Gray is well equipped to lead the growth of Biochemistry in these areas. After his Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley (where he discovered one of the first selective inhibitors of cyclin-dependent kinases, Purvalanol), he served as a staff scientist and director at the Novartis Research Foundation Genomics Institute prior to his current position at Harvard Medical School. Gray has received multiple awards as an independent investigator, including a National Science Foundation Career Award, an Outstanding Achievement in Cancer Research Award from the American Association for Cancer Research, and the ACS Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry, among others. Over the course of barely 15 years, Gray has discovered novel inhibitors of a remarkable number of important disease targets; these molecules have served as both research tools and the inspiration for drug discovery programs worldwide. Linda Hsieh-Wilson, Executive Editor, California Institute of Technology. If we are ever to grasp and understand the full complexity of brains, we must have an © 2017 American Chemical Society
Received: July 26, 2017 Published: August 22, 2017 4289
DOI: 10.1021/acs.biochem.7b00720 Biochemistry 2017, 56, 4289−4290
Biochemistry
Editorial
special issues on Seeing Into Cells (scheduled for October 2017) and Future of Biochemistry (scheduled for January 2018). Sincerely,
awarded a Helen Hay Whitney Foundation Fellowship, an ERC Consolidator Grant, and a Wellcome Investigator Award. John A. Gerlt, Associate Editor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. John Gerlt is a world leader in the field of mechanistic enzymology, with pioneering contributions to our understanding of phosphoryl transfer reactions, the chemistry of carbon acids, and the discovery and enzyme superfamilies. His most recent efforts are to lead a collaborative and multidisciplinary effort to assign function to the exploding numbers of unknown and uncharacterized enzymes. This effort has provided the publically available and very useful web-based Enzyme Similarity Tool.3 Gerlt will handle most submissions related to enzyme function and/or mechanism. Gerlt received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and performed postdoctoral work at the National Institutes of Health prior to his independent career at Yale and the University of Maryland. He is currently the Gutgsell Chair at the University of Illinois and has been honored with an Arthur Cope Scholar Award, the A. I. Scott Medal, and most recently the 2017 Gordon Hammes Lecture Award! Gerlt has been an associate editor of Biochemistry since 2004. Farren Isaacs, Associate Editor, Yale University. Farren Isaacs is both an engineer and a systems and synthetic biologist working to develop foundational technologies and organisms that improve our understanding of biological systems and enable their modification to solve global challenges. At Biochemistry, Isaacs will handle all submissions in systems and synthetic biology. Isaacs received his Ph.D. from Boston University (where he developed the MAGE and CAGE techniques) and has been named a “Rising Young Star of Science” by Genome Technology Magazine. For his work, Isaacs has been honored by the Beckman Young Investigator Award, the Gen9 Prize, and the DuPont Young Professor Award. Jayant Udgaonkar, Associate Editor, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. Understanding the critical dependence of foldingor misfoldingon protein function is the primary focus of Jayant Udgaonkar. Through meticulous biophysical studies involving diverse techniques such as hydrogen exchange-mass spectrometry and time-resolved fluorescence, Udgaonkar zooms in on both the early steps of the protein folding process and those elements that drive cooperativity. He leverages this knowledge to develop new insight into protein misfolding disease. Udgaonkar will handle all contributions whose primary focus is biophysics or the details of the protein folding process. Udgaonkar received his Ph.D. from Cornell University and was a Jane Coffin Childs postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University prior to joining the faculty at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, where he is currently a Senior Professor. He has received numerous honors, including a Biotechnology Career Fellowship, a Swarnajayanti Fellowship, and the GN Ramachandran Gold Medal from CSIR. Udgaonkar has been elected to the Indian Academy of Sciences, the Indian National Science Academy, and the World Academy of Sciences. Udgaonkar has been an associate editor of Biochemistry since 2015. Next Steps. As you might imagine, I am very excited to have such a capable and diverse editorial team helping set the new tone of our journal. Beyond designating in your submissions editors whom you think would be a good match for your paper, please be on the lookout for new initiatives like special issues created by our editorial team, including upcoming
Alanna Schepartz*
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Department of Chemistry, Yale University, 225 Prospect Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, United States
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Corresponding Author
*E-mail:
[email protected]. ORCID
Alanna Schepartz: 0000-0003-2127-3932 Notes
Views expressed in this editorial are those of the author and not necessarily the views of the ACS.
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REFERENCES
(1) Schepartz, A. (2016) Building on 50 Years of Excellence Where Chemistry Meets Life Science. Biochemistry 55, 4997. (2) Schepartz, A. (2017) Yes, Biochemistry Now Publishes Communications and Something NewFrom the Bench. Biochemistry 56, 2863−2864. (3) Gerlt, J. A., Bouvier, J. T., Davidson, D. B., Imker, H. J., Sadkhin, B., Slater, D. R., and Whalen, K. L. (2015) Enzyme Function InitiativeEnzyme Similarity Tool (EFI-EST): A web tool for generating protein sequence similarity networks. Biochim. Biophys. Acta, Proteins Proteomics 1854, 1019−1037.
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.biochem.7b00720 Biochemistry 2017, 56, 4289−4290
