Greetings from the new Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Plant Research 2021

Journal of Plant Research - It is my pleasure to be writing this editorial as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Plant Research (JPR) for the next 4 years, following the...     

Joint position reproduction and joint position discrimination at the ankle are not related

Abstract

Purpose: Limited data in current literature can be found on the relation between the two commonly-used active proprioception assessment methods –active joint position reproduction (JPR) and active movement extent discrimination assessment (AMEDA). The current study compared the two active methods, JPR and AMEDA, to investigate their interrelationship over two studies that differed in task difficulty, using active ankle inversion movements made in weight-bearing to maximise ecological validity.

Methods: 50 participants volunteered in this research, 20 of whom on a harder protocol and the other 30 on an easier protocol, were tested by both methods, JPR and AMEDA. Proprioceptive acuity was represented by absolute error (AE) and variable error (VE) for JPR and by AE and the area under the curve (AUC) for AMEDA.

Results: Proprioceptive acuity scores are found to be significantly correlated within test methods but not between methods for either hard or easy tasks, where JPR AE and VE scores were not correlated with either AMEDA AE or AUC. Further, proprioceptive acuity scores were significantly higher on the easy task when tested with the AMEDA method, but not with JPR method.

Conclusion: Scores obtained from the two active movement proprioception tests, movement extent discrimination and joint position reproduction, were not significantly correlated. Taken together with previous findings, these results show that for proprioception, scores from the three classical psychophysical methods for measuring sensitivity (adjustment, limits and constant stimuli) are not correlated with each other. This suggests that each proprioception measurement system assesses a different aspect of proprioception.     

Clinical grade preparation of human natural regulatory T‐cells encoding the thymidine kinase suicide gene as a safety gene: authors' reponse

This Response refers to JGM 1286, which was published in The Journal of Gene Medicine 11:2 . Please follow the link below to view the Letter to the Editor. Letter to the Editor     

Evaluation of three polymerase chain reaction techniques for detection of Brucella DNA in peripheral human blood

Brucellosis is a widespread zoonosis. Currently the diagnosis of this zoonosis is based on microbiological and serological laboratory tests. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) has been used to detect DNA from Brucella. Different target genes, primer pairs, PCR techniques, and extraction procedures have previously been published for Brucella detection. But only a few of these primers have been used in human samples, and only one study has been carried out to compare sensitivity between them. In the present study, 3 sets of primers and 3 different PCR protocols amplifying 3 different regions of the Brucella genome were compared for detection of Brucella DNA in a peripheral-blood PCR assay to conclude which is most suitable for the clinical diagnostic laboratory. These 3 pairs of primers amplify 3 different fragments included in (i) a gene encoding a 31 kDa Brucella abortus antigen (B4/B5), (ii) a sequence 16S rRNA of B. abortus (F4/R2), and (iii) a gene encoding an outer membrane protein (omp-2) (JPF/JPR). Some modifications on the reported techniques were applied during the present work to improve the outcome. The results showed that the B4/B5 primer pair had the highest sensitivity for detection of positive samples (98%), the JPF/JPR primer pair detected 88.4% of positive samples, whereas F4/R2 primer pair was the least sensitive, being able to detect only 53.1% of positive samples. The specificity of the 3 techniques was 100%. The B4/B5 primer pair was also able to detect the smallest number of bacteria (700 cfu/mL), whereas JPF/JPR was able to detect 7 x 105 cfu/mL and F4/R2 was able to detect 7 x 107 cfu/mL. It is thus concluded that using the B4/B5 primer PCR with the suggested modifications is a robust assay, which meets the sensitivity requirements to be used for testing of human blood samples for brucellosis in the diagnostic laboratory.     

The Sixth Liposome Research Days Conference “Liposomes: L'Avant Garde”

Abstract

The Journal of Liposome Research is a misleading name. It implies that our chief concern should be liposomes, which most people understand to be single or multilamellar vesicles. Such a single-minded focus would not only be boring, it would fail to describe the breadth of the field or the preoccupations of most of the practitioners. A more accurate title for what most readers expect from this journal might be Journal of Lipid-Based Delivery Systems, which would also cover, for example, lipid systems for delivering DNA into cells, polymer-lipid delivery vehicles, lipid-based emulsion systems, etc. Although this title might be more accurate, I, for one, would find it disappointing because it implies that our sole concern is how lipids could be used as delivery systems in the pharmaceutical industry. My preferred title–though I doubt that the Editor would stand for it– would be the Journal of Lipid-Based Delivery Systems and All the Other Research Related to Lipids That Any Scientist with a Healthy Curiosity Ought to Find Interesting. A bit awkward perhaps, but at least it conveys a sense, not of where we are, but where many us feel we should be.     

New short communications section: call for papers

Communications from the Mammal Society , which have been published twice yearly, in June (see pp. 209–244, this issue) and December, will cease from the end of this year. From January 1999, this Section of the Journal of Zoology will be allocated to Short Communications , and contributions will be welcomed on all taxa within the general field of zoological research, both invertebrate and vertebrate. Three copies of each paper, following the Instructions for Contributors printed at the back of the Journal of Zoology , should be sent directly to Dr M. L. Gorman, Editor of Short Communications, Journal of Zoology , Department of Zoology, Aberdeen University, Tillydrone Avenue, Aberdeen AB24 2TZ, Scotland, U.K. Tel.: +44 (0)1224 272850; fax: +44 (0)1224 272396; e-mail: m.gorman@abdn.ac.uk .     

Riccardo (Rico) Wittek (1944-2008)

Riccardo (Rico) Wittek died 26 September 2008 in Switzerland. Rico was well known for his work on the molecular biology of poxviruses and for his work with the World Health Organization on biosafety that led to international guidelines for work with dangerous infectious agents. His colleagues Erwin G. Van Meir, Daniel Lavanchy, and Bernard Moss have written Rico''s memorial.Lynn W. EnquistEditor in Chief, Journal of Virology     

NHJ direct online in January 2011!

In one of our previous Editor’s pages, we announced that our Netherlands Heart Journal (NHJ) received a 2009 impact factor of 1.4, which is a crucial step for our journal. This achievement was a consequence of another important step for our journal, being the recognition by PubMed as of January 2007. From that moment on, the Chief Editorial Board and our Publisher observed a considerable increase in submitted articles. In 2007 we received a total of 62 submissions.     

Biophysical Reviews’ “Meet the Councilor”—a profile of Anastasia A. Anashkina

As one of the twelve Councilors of the International Union of Pure and Applied Biophysics elected in summer 2021, I have been asked to provide this short biographical sketch for the journal readers. I am a new member of the IUPAB Council. I hold a specialist degree in Applied Physics and Mathematics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and PhD in Biophysics from Moscow State University. I have spent my entire professional career at Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, where I am currently a senior researcher. I am Associate Professor at the Digital Health Institute of the I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University since 2018, and have trained undergraduate students in structural biology, biophysics, and bioinformatics. In addition, I serve as the Guest Editor of special journal issues of International Journal of Molecular Sciences and Frontiers in Genetics BMC genomics. Now I joined Biophysical Reviews Editorial Board as IUPAB Councilor. I am a Secretary of National Committee of Russian Biophysicists, and have helped to organize scientific conferences and workshops, such as the VI Congress of Russian Biophysicists.

     

BOOK REVIEW

Drug Addiction, Volumes I and II: Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology, Vol. 45/1 and II (Editor W. R. M artin )     

Comparison of three different PCR methods for detection of Brucella spp in human blood samples

In the diagnosis of human brucellosis, PCR could be a more sensitive technique than blood cultures and more specific than conventional serological tests. We compared three different PCR methods for the detection of Brucella spp. and we studied whether human genomic DNA affect the sensitivity of three primer pairs for the detection of Brucella DNA in a peripheral-blood PCR assay. These three pairs of primers amplified three different fragments included in: (i). a gene encoding a 31-kDa Brucella abortus antigen (primers B4/B5), (ii). a sequence 16S rRNA of B. abortus (primers F4/R2), and (iii). a gene encoding an outer membrane protein (omp-2) (primers JPF/JPR). The three primers assayed showed a difference in sensitivity for detecting purified Brucella DNA, ranging between 8 fg and 20 pg. However, the sensitivity of the primers F4/R2 and B4/B5 was affected by the presence of human DNA while the primers JPF/JPR were not. Therefore, although the sensitivity of PCR using primers F4/R2 is affected by human DNA, they are still the most sensitive and they could provide a useful tool for the diagnosis of human brucellosis.     

Withdrawal: Muscle-derived Satellite Cells for Treating Type 1 Diabetes in Rats (Rattus norvegicus)

The above article from Journal of Cellular Physiology, “Muscle-derived Satellite Cells for Treating Type 1 Diabetes in Rats (Rattus norvegicus)” by Yu Ren, Hefei Wang, Si Ha, Xingsheng Zhao, Xiao Wang, Yu Lan and Xiaoling Liu published online on 10 January 2018 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com), has been withdrawn by agreement between the journal Editor in Chief Gary S. Stein and John Wiley and Sons, Inc. The retraction has been agreed because the authors are not responding to requests to finalize their article for publication in the journal as the Version of Record.     

Lipid metabolism has been good to me

My career in research has flourished through hard work, supportive mentors, and outstanding mentees and collaborators. The Carman laboratory has contributed to the understanding of lipid metabolism through the isolation and characterization of key lipid biosynthetic enzymes as well as through the identification of the enzyme-encoding genes. Our findings from yeast have proven to be invaluable to understand regulatory mechanisms of human lipid metabolism. Several rewarding aspects of my career have been my service to the Journal of Biological Chemistry as an editorial board member and Associate Editor, the National Institutes of Health as a member of study sections, and national and international scientific meetings as an organizer. I advise early career scientists to not assume anything, acknowledge others’ accomplishments, and pay it forward.     

Protein Design and Evolution for Biocatalysis

Cover illustration: Protein Design and Evolution for Biocatalysis. This special issue of Biotechnology Journal contains selected contributions from scientists participating to the ESF-EMBO Symposium which took place in October 2008 in San Feliu, Spain. Guest Editor is the chair and organizer of the meeting, Jiri Damborsky from Brno (Czech Republic). He highlights a variety of topics brought up in the meeting, ranging from new methods of rational design, directed evolution, metagenomics and single-molecule techniques, to construction of useful enzymes for industrial applications. Uwe Bornscheuer (Greifswald, Germany) authored a meeting report. Image colored pencils, © PhotoDisc, Inc.; Protein logo © ESF.