Molecular BioSystems—celebrations, growth and development

Introduction

Welcome to volume 6 of Molecular BioSystems. As we begin a new year let’s start by looking back over the last 12 months at the various ways in which the journal has continued to grow and develop.

With every passing year Molecular BioSystems receives a steady increase in submissions and this has led to increasing numbers of published articles year on year.

The increase in numbers of primary research papers published has shown a particularly strong increase in the last two years whilst the journal continues to commission good quality review articles on important topics.

2009 marked the fifth year of publication for the journal. To help mark the occasion and to highlight the range of work featured in Molecular BioSystems a selection of articles representative of the journal scope were made free for 6 weeks over the summer. Also in the summer a drinks reception was held at the 34th FEBS Congress in Prague to celebrate the growth and development of Molecular BioSystems in particular and the expanding Bioscience Portfolio of the RSC in general. We published a news story on the journal web site after the event.

Themed issues

Molecular BioSystems has continued to grow and develop guided by the Editorial and Advisory Boards. Highly topical themed issues have been published in the journal in 2009 including a Synthetic Biology issue (www.molecularbiosystems.org/synthbio) co-ordinated by Sachdev Sidhu and Hagan Bayley. Aspects of this broad field included ‘Darwinian Chemistry: towards the synthesis of a simple cell’ (Loakes and Holliger), ‘Exploring and exploiting genetic modularity through the design of novel biological networks’ (Agapakis and Silver) and ‘A synthetic metabolite-based mammalian inter-cell signalling system’ (Fussenegger et al.).

Madan Babu and Hirotada Mori put together an excellent Computational and Systems Biology issue (www.molecularbiosystems.org/compsysbio) which is the largest ever issue of the journal published to date with 51 reviews and papers. Topics covered included approaches for looking at genetic variation and development of novel therapeutics (Blundell et al.), extracting information from genetic interaction maps (Breker and Schuldiner) and genetic interaction networks in E. coli (Emili et al.).

Looking ahead, the coming year will see two very important areas of research highlighted by dedicated themed issues.

The first, co-ordinated by Ben Cravatt, will be on the subject of chemical genomics and the second is being co-ordinated by Tadhg Begley and Hening Lin on the subject of post-translational modifications.

To view all published and forthcoming themed issues in the journal view the themed issue web page here: http://www.rsc.org/Publishing/Journals/mb/Special_Issues.asp

Emerging investigators

Following on from the success of our first Emerging Investigators issue in 2008 a second Emerging Investigators issue was published in 2009 (www.molecularbiosystems.org/ei2009). These issues serve to highlight the work of principal investigators who are still at a relatively early stage in their careers and whose work is likely to significantly influence the fields of chemical- and systems-biology.

The 2009 issue contained an excellent review on molecular pathways in tumor progression (Ali and Sjöblom) followed by 7 communications and 16 full papers. Research covered included screening of a branched peptide library with HIV-1 TAR RNA, potential therapeutics for psychological abuse, metabolic profiling of Helicobacter pylori glycosylation, RNA aptamers against amyloid β-peptide, the topology of drug-target interaction networks and much more.

The call for papers for the 2010 Emerging Investigators issue has now been sent out and we look forward to an equally successful issue this year.

Change at the top

A big thank you goes to Tom Kodadek who ended his tenure as Editorial Board Chair at the end of 2009. Tom’s contribution to the growth and development of the journal over the last 5 years has been very considerable indeed. He has published 8 articles in the journal, 7 of which were primary research. His commitment and ideas have never been in short supply and we thank him once again for his invaluable hard work and support.

It is with great pleasure that we welcome our new Chair, Professor Charles Boone from the University of Toronto’s Terrence Donnelly Centre for Cellular and Biomolecular Research. Charlie sees his new role as a “wonderful opportunity” as Molecular BioSystems grows in both its readership and its scope and is looking forward to working with the other members of the Editorial and Advisory Boards and the Editorial Team to build on the success of Tom Kodadek's leadership.

Charlie’s reputation and experience in the world of yeast systems biology will be a great asset to the journal and has commented that “Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this journal is its interdisciplinary component, which is reflected both in the make up of the group of scientists on the Board and in the published articles. The major focus of my research is yeast genomics and systems-level studies and so I will bring this flavor to the mix of expertise already in the Board to help further develop the interdisciplinary aspect of the journal.”

Read the profile article in this issue to find out more about the Molecular BioSystems New Editorial Board Chair (DOI: 10.1039/b922951p).

Thank you

Most importantly of all we would like to thank all our authors, referees and readers for their enthusiastic support during 2009. On behalf of the Molecular BioSystems team, we would like to wish you all a very happy and prosperous 2010!

Charlie Boone, Editorial Board Chair, Molecular BioSystems

Harp Minhas, Managing Editor, Molecular BioSystems

Michael Smith, Deputy Editor, Molecular BioSystems

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