Looking in the Rear-View Mirror As We Anticipate Another 100 Years
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Editorial JGP 100th Anniversary Looking in the rear-view mirror as we anticipate another 100 years Sharona E. Gordon Editor-in-Chief, Journal of General Physiology It has become a February tradition to publish an editorial itorial advisory board, who choose reviewers and man- that summarizes recent changes at JGP, discusses planned age the review and decision-making process. The guest changes, and introduces new members of the Editorial editors are invited to our weekly editors’ meeting to dis- Advisory Board. This editorial will continue that tradition, cuss the reviews and bring the work into our collective but in the broader context of our reflections and celebra- decision-making process. We believe our review system is tions (Gordon, 2017b) as we approach the 100th anniver- the best in the business and keeps the journal grounded sary of our first issue published in September 1918. within the physiology community. The Journal of General Physiology’s (JGP) mission is This year, we added an exciting new strand to our program to publish mechanistic and quantitative molecular and for early-career scientists. The Junior Faculty Networking cellular physiology of the highest quality, to provide a Cohorts support and connect junior faculty in the first best-in-class author experience, and to nurture future stage of their independent careers (Gordon, 2017a). Up generations of independent researchers. To evaluate to six junior faculty are matched with a member of our whether we are successful in our mission, it is worth look- Editorial Advisory Board for quarterly group discussions ing at each of these three mission components. The first about topics such as selecting and managing personnel, component, publishing great physiological research, re- overseeing finances, and collaborating wisely. Each cohort quires an ongoing reevaluation of what defines physiol- continues to meet until most or all of the participants ogy. In our first year of publication, not a single paper have transitioned to the next stage of their careers. In appeared that featured experiments on mammals. Phys- addition, we have recently added postdoctoral scholars to iology was broad, with much work on microorganisms, our Focus Groups, and we continue to recruit postdocs plants, invertebrate animals, reptiles, amphibians, and into the Postdoctoral Reviewer Mentoring Program. birds. Today, the breadth of physiology in JGP is organism These programs help us fulfill the third component of neutral, with mechanistic insight and rigor as the driving our mission by offering one-on-one and group mentoring criteria for publication. Physiology in JGP has evolved across the early stages of scientific careers. to include computational work that stands on its own. Suggestions for new programs and directions come from Journal General of Physiology We have also introduced a new article category called across the community, but especially from members of our Hypothesis, an example of which was recently published Editorial Advisory Board. This year, we have expanded the (Ficici et al., 2017), which is especially suited for novel board once again. In addition to enriching the traditional theoretical analyses, as well as interpretations of existing areas of strength in the journal, new members focusing on data, that help to define a new conceptual framework or excitation-contraction coupling, membrane trafficking, perspective for future investigations. molecular motors, and reproductive physiology have Our focus on author experience emphasizes a fast, fair, joined the JGP fold. Each new member offers a glimpse of and transparent review process. Our median time to eval- themselves in the biographies found below. We hope you uate whether manuscripts should be sent for review is 1 will enjoy learning about them. We also hope you will take d, and our median time to first decision after review is the opportunity to get to know them better by reading our 30 d (for submissions between July 2014 and June 2016). new series of Essays—the first of which is published in this All decisions are made collectively by the six associate ed- issue of JGP (Aldrich, 2018)—in which Editors, Editorial itors and myself, with our in-depth discussions ensuring Advisory Board members, and other members of our consistency in the review process and clarity in commu- community discuss factors that influenced the evolution nicating what is required of authors in decision letters. As of their careers. As we look toward the 100th anniversary active scientists, we are available to discuss authors’ work of JGP, we also look back on what makes us who we are as at any stage and to explain our decisions in detail. When individuals and as a community. manuscripts fall outside the associate editors’ range of © 2018 Rockefeller University Press This article is distributed under the terms of an expertise, we bring in guest editors from among our ed- Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike–No Mirror Sites license for the first six months after the publication date (see http ://www .rupress .org /terms /). After six months it is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 4.0 Correspondence to Sharona E. Gordon: [email protected] International license, as described at https ://creativecommons .org /licenses /by -nc -sa /4 .0 /). The Rockefeller University Press J. Gen. Physiol. 2018 Vol. 150 No. 2 169–174 https://doi.org/10.1085/jgp.201811995 169 New Editorial Advisory Board members Alessio Accardi Alessio Accardi is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Anesthesiology, of Physiology and Biophysics, and of Biochemistry at Weill Cornell Medical College. He received his degree in Physics from the University of Rome, “La Sapienza” with a thesis on pore-forming toxins. For his doctoral research, he joined the laboratory of Michael Pusch at the Institute for Biophysics of the CNR in Genoa, Italy, where he studied the biophysical and pharmacological properties of the voltage-gated CLC-type Cl− channels. He continued his studies of these channels in the group of Chris Miller at Brandeis University as a postdoctoral fellow, where they discovered that the CLCs are a functionally divergent family that comprises both Cl− channels and H+/Cl− exchangers. In his group at Weill Cornell, Alessio uses a combination of electrophysiological, biochemical, and structural approaches to study two functionally diverse families of membrane proteins, the CLCs and the recently identified TMEM16s, which encompass both Ca2+-activated Cl− channels as well as dual-function phospholipid scramblases and nonselective ion channels. PHOTO COurtesY OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY, Department OF PHYSIOLOGY AND BIOPHYSICS. Frances Ashcroft Ashcroft is Professor of Physiology at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. She received her PhD from the Cambridge University in 1979 and then did postdoctoral studies with Peter Stanfield at the University of Leicester and with Susumu Hagiwara at the University of California at Los Angeles. She established her own group at the University of Oxford in 1983, with a focus on the regulation of insulin secretion from the pancreatic β cell. Her current research includes studies of the ATP-sensitive potassium channel, its regulation by intracellular nucleotides and therapeutic drugs, and its role in diseases of insulin secretion such as neonatal diabetes and hyperinsulinism. She also has a growing interest in β cell metabolism and in the effects of chronic hyperglycemia on islet cell function. In addition, she enjoys writing popular science books, one of which (The Spark of Life) is about ion channels. PHOTO COurtesY OF RObert TAYLOR (taYLOR-PHOTO.CO.UK) Anne Carlson Anne Carlson is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. She re- ceived her PhD at the University of Washington in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics working with Bertil Hille to uncover the role that CatSper channels play as mammalian sperm prepare to fertilize an egg. For her postdoctoral studies, she continued on at UW and worked with Bill Zagotta. In the Zagotta laboratory, Dr. Carlson performed structural and functional studies on voltage-gated potassium channels in the Ether-a-go-go family. Dr. Carlson now has her own group that studies both the ion channels important for the earliest events of fertilization and how these channels are regulated. PHOTO COurtesY OF JOEL ROSENBAUM. Nancy Carrasco Nancy Carrasco is Professor of Cellular and Molecular Physiology at the Yale School of Medicine, which she joined in 2011. She obtained her MD and Master’s Degree in Biochemistry from the National Autonomous University of Mexico in her native Mexico City, where she began working on membrane proteins and transport phenomena. Nancy did her postdoc- toral work in Ron Kaback’s laboratory at the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology in New Jersey, where she elucidated the proton translocation pathway of the lac permease. She then joined the faculty at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, where she cloned and characterized the sodium/iodide symporter (NIS), the key plasma membrane protein that mediates the active transport of iodide in the thyroid and a few other tissues. Nancy’s cloning and characterization of NIS were a breakthrough in thyroid pathophysiology with ramifications in many other fields, including structure/function of transport proteins, molecular endocrinology, gene transfer, and public health. Nancy’s current work focuses on elucidating in detail the transport mechanisms of NIS and related plasma membrane transporters and extending the medical applications of NIS beyond thyroid disease. PHOTO COurtesY OF Albert EINSTEIN COLLEGE OF MEDICINE. Sudha Chakrapani Sudha Chakrapani is an Associate Professor at Case Western Reserve University. She has had a longstanding interest in the molecular mechanisms underlying the membrane transport phenomena. Sudha received her Master’s Degree in Biomedical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, India. Her doctoral work with Tony Auerbach at the University at Buffalo focused on single-channel kinetic studies of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors.