Editorial

Rab proteins represent a large family of ras-like GTPases that regulate distinct vesicular transport events at the level of membrane targeting and/or fusion. We report here the primary sequence, subcellular localization and functional activity of a new member of the rab protein family, rab9. The majority of rab9 appears to be located on the surface of late endosomes. Rab9, purified from Escherichia coli strains expressing this protein, could be prenylated in vitro in the presence of cytosolic proteins and geranylgeranyl diphosphate. In vitro-prenylated rab9 protein, but not C-terminally truncated rab9, stimulated the transport of mannose 6-phosphate receptors from late endosomes to the trans Golgi network in a cell-free system that reconstitutes this transport step. Rab7, a related rab protein that is also localized to late endosomes, was inactive in the in vitro transport assay, despite its efficient prenylation and capacity to bind and hydrolyze GTP. These results strongly suggest that rab9 functions in the transport of mannose 6-phosphate receptors between late endosomes and the trans Golgi network. Moreover, our results confirm the observation that a given organelle may bear multiple rab proteins with different biological functions.

A segment of the human alpha 1-antitrypsin (alpha 1AT) 5'-flanking region comprising nucleotides -137 to -37 from the start of transcription is sufficient to drive liver-specific transcription from the homologous alpha 1AT promoter and from the heterologous SV40 promoter. In this paper we characterize two proteins, LF-A1 and LF-B1, whose ability to bind wild-type and mutant alpha 1AT promoter segments correlates with the ability of these segments to activate transcription in vivo. DNase I protection and methylation interference analysis reveals that LF-A1 recognizes sequences present in the regulatory region of the human alpha 1-antitrypsin, apolipoprotein A1 and haptoglobin-related genes. These sequences share a common 5' TGG/A A/C CC 3' motif. LF-B1 binds to the palindrome 5' TGGTTAAT/ATTCACCA 3' which is present in the human alpha 1-antitrypsin gene between positions -78 and -62 from the start of transcription. LF-B1 also recognizes a related sequence present in the human albumin gene between -66 and -50. These results suggest that LF-A1 and LF-B1 are common positive trans-acting factors which are required for the expression of several genes in the hepatocyte.

We have investigated the role of phosphorylation in the endocytosis of the human transferrin receptor (TR) by replacing its phosphorylation site, Ser24, with Ala through site-directed mutagenesis of the TR cDNA. The TR Ala24 mutant expressed in mouse 3T3 cells was not phosphorylated, even following stimulation of protein kinase C by phorbol ester. However, in spite of this defect the mutant was efficiently endocytosed and recycled back to the plasma membrane with kinetics similar to those of TR and a control mutant TR Ala63. Thus, these results confirm earlier results by Davis et al. (1986, J. Biol. Chem., 261-9034-9041) that Ser24 of human TR is the phosphorylation site for protein kinase C but do not support a role of this modification as a signal for TR endocytosis and recycling.

snR17, one of the most abundant capped small nuclear RNAs of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, is equivalent to U3 snRNA of other eukaryotes. It is 328 nucleotides in length, 1.5 times as long as other U3 RNAs, but shares significant homology both in nucleotide sequence and in predicted secondary structure. Human scleroderma antiserum specific to nucleolar U3 RNP can enrich snR17 from sonicated yeast nuclear extracts. Unlike other yeast snRNAs which are encoded by single copy genes, snR17 is encoded by two genetically unlinked genes: SNR17A and SNR17B. The RNA snR17A is more abundant than snR17B. Deleting one or other of the genes has no obvious phenotypic effect, except that the steady-state level of snR17B is increased in snr17a- strains. Haploid strains with both genes deleted are inviable, therefore yeast U3 is essential.

The News & Comment article “EMBL's outward expansion strains its core facility” by Nigel Williams (12 Dec., [p. 1875][1]) is thorough, but incorrectly implies that the headquarters of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, has been squeezed financially in favor of the outstations. The financial pressures that exist are felt both in the outstations and in Heidelberg (and also in national laboratories). The difficulty is that the budgetary growth that the member countries have been able to offer in this decade has not been commensurate with the agreed increase in EMBL activities, or with the growth of opportunities in the life sciences, pure and applied. It is hoped that the increasing emphasis on biotechnology in Europe will highlight the importance and needs of this outstanding European center of research and advanced training. The EMBL council appreciates the excellent performance of the laboratory's scientists even under tight budgets and has full confidence in Director-General Fotis Kafatos and the priorities he has set, in which the Heidelberg laboratory ranks high. Williams also states that the EMBL's governing council, made up of representatives of the governments of each member state, must make all decisions unanimously, making it easy for any government to stifle budget increases. Despite the fact that the scientific program and financial framework in which the EMBL has to work must be approved unanimously, nearly all other decisions require majority rule only. [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.278.5345.1875

Deep in the German forests above Heidelberg, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), in its infancy in the late 1970s, was a haven of basic research and serenity. I remember hard experimental work, intensive discussions and unexpected ideas emerging along the wooded paths. On a recent visit, I saw that the busy buzzing of EMBL has by no means receded. But I also saw that EMBL is changing. The explosive growth of the parking lots and the new buildings for commercial companies are reshaping the glade; scientists are sitting behind their computer screens most of the time; there are more females than males; last summer, the temperature broke another record high. And, probably much more important, the scientists working there are becoming aware that there is a world outside the laboratories. It started with rumours rising from the valley that first reminded us that a wider world was bubbling not far away. We were amazed at the gossip reported in the local press that clover, growing around the Laboratory, had a suspicious number of leaves because of some mysterious genetic manipulations. We were shocked when the media widely covered the claim made by an East German scientist that AIDS was a product of the US Secret Services. Nowadays, news about cloning, stem‐cell research, bioterrorism and the turbulence of the stock market is pouring in daily. Biologists know about change. For more than 3 billion years, life has undergone changes, and no one would be here to witness anything if evolution had not been hard at work. But the changes that are now occurring are different, because they are anthropogenic and because they are happening increasingly rapidly. And they are not met with enthusiasm by everyone: “Stop improving things!”, an angry hand had written on the door of the computer room. …

Journal of MicroscopyVolume 124, Issue 3 p. 3-4 Free Access VITRIFICATION OF PURE WATER FOR ELECTRON MICROSCOPY J. Dubochet, J. Dubochet European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) Postfach 10.2209, D-6900 Heidelberg, F.R.G.Search for more papers by this authorA.W. McDowall, A.W. McDowall European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) Postfach 10.2209, D-6900 Heidelberg, F.R.G.Search for more papers by this author J. Dubochet, J. Dubochet European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) Postfach 10.2209, D-6900 Heidelberg, F.R.G.Search for more papers by this authorA.W. McDowall, A.W. McDowall European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) Postfach 10.2209, D-6900 Heidelberg, F.R.G.Search for more papers by this author First published: December 1981 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2818.1981.tb02483.xCitations: 303AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. References Brügeller, P. & Mayer, E. (1980) Complete vitrification in pure liquid water and dilute aqueous solutions. Nature 288, 569. Dowell, L.G. & Rinfret, A.P. (1960) Low-temperature forms of ice as studied by X-ray diffraction. Nature 188, 1144. Talmon, Y. & Thomas, E.L. (1977) Temperature rise and sublimation of water from thin frozen hydrated specimens in cold stage microscopy. Scanning Electron Microscopy I. Chicago, 265. Citing Literature Volume124, Issue3December 1981Pages 3-4 ReferencesRelatedInformation

Co-authorship analyses are both difficult to perform and interpret. We have devised a new way of calculating and representing hierarchical author networks that depict relationships among authors in a more exhaustive and less equivocal manner than most available automatic analyses. Any structure, however complex, can be broken down into independent subclusters of authors that can be represented as individual interconnected networks. We illustrate our approach by analysing the authors of publications giving the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) as an affiliation in 1994 (from the ISI 1994 CD-ROM). The networks can be interpreted by referring to the official EMBL staff list (Annual Report 1993) and, in terms of research topics, by consulting the article titles and abstracts. In this respect, correspondence analyses of the author-publication matrices—that are the counterparts of the author-author matrices—prove extremely useful in structuring the thematic information. In fact, both methods—the hierarchical author networks and the correspondence analysis biplots—mutually enrich each other and provide a global picture of the inherent structure and interests of the EMBL as given by their 1994 publications.

Editorial: Twenty‐Five Years Later…

BackgroundThe World Congress of Sports Injury Prevention initiates in Oslo in 2005 as a unique and comprehensive sports medicine prevention conference.ObjectiveThe number and quality of presented abstracts published in BJSM...

Background Editorial board members, as experts in their field, often publish relevant research in journals on which they serve. This combined role of “editor-as-author” may be a source for conflict of interest in the peer review process. In Gastroenterology-focused journals, the prevalence of instances for editor-as-author has not been explored. Aims To estimate the prevalence of editor-as-author among high impact factor (IF) Gastroenterology-focused journals. Methods We used a cross-sectional study design. We used InCites Journal reports to identify 30 Gastroenterology journals with the highest IF in 2020, wherein we included journals that had publicly accessible board membership that indicated the following: institution/city/country; and at least the first name initial and entire last name for editorial board members. We created a list of all editorial board members, excluding any emeritus editors and society representatives. Among these journals, we identified all original research articles using the Web of Science, wherein we excluded any editorial material, meeting abstracts, and clinical practice guidelines. Among these original publications, two authors then independently and in duplicate determined any instances of authors who had editorial board membership. The primary outcome measure was the prevalence of editors-as-authors. Secondary outcomes involved the number of editorial board members with first authorships and senior/corresponding authorships, as well as the number of articles that disclosed editorial board membership. Results Among the 30 Gastroenterology-focused journals that had the highest IF, 24 met the relevant inclusion criteria. These journals had a total of 6162 original publications, of which 992 (16.1%) had at least one instance of editor-as-author; 8 (0.1%) articles disclosed that there was editorial board membership among its authors. Among all 24 included journals, there were a total 2106 editorial board members. Of these members, 635 (30.2%) had at least one instance of editor-as-author, wherein 134 and 263 members were first authors and senior/corresponding authors, respectively. Conclusions Our study found that approximately one third of editorial board members among high IF Gastroenterology-focused journals were also authors in these same journals. Future analysis will focus on determining whether there is the difference in quality of published work compared to those without editorial board membership. Funding Agencies None

ADVERTISEMENT RETURN TO ISSUEPREVIn FocusNEXTBuilding Up a Chemical Proteomics Network in Europe and BeyondMaja Köhn*†, Michael M. Meijler‡, and Markus Kaiser*§View Author Information† European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Genome Biology Unit, Meyerhofstrasse 1, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany‡ Department of Chemistry and National Institute for Biotechnology in the Negev, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Be’er-Sheva 84105, Israel§ University of Duisburg-Essen, Chemical Biology, ZMB, Faculty of Biology, Universitätsstr. 2, 45117 Essen, Germany*Email: [email protected]*Email: [email protected]Cite this: ACS Chem. Biol. 2014, 9, 8, 1647–1648Publication Date (Web):August 15, 2014Publication History Published online15 August 2014Published inissue 15 August 2014https://doi.org/10.1021/cb5005299Copyright © 2014 American Chemical SocietyRIGHTS & PERMISSIONSArticle Views375Altmetric-Citations-LEARN ABOUT THESE METRICSArticle Views are the COUNTER-compliant sum of full text article downloads since November 2008 (both PDF and HTML) across all institutions and individuals. These metrics are regularly updated to reflect usage leading up to the last few days.Citations are the number of other articles citing this article, calculated by Crossref and updated daily. Find more information about Crossref citation counts.The Altmetric Attention Score is a quantitative measure of the attention that a research article has received online. Clicking on the donut icon will load a page at altmetric.com with additional details about the score and the social media presence for the given article. Find more information on the Altmetric Attention Score and how the score is calculated. Share Add toView InAdd Full Text with ReferenceAdd Description ExportRISCitationCitation and abstractCitation and referencesMore Options Share onFacebookTwitterWechatLinked InReddit Read OnlinePDF (124 KB) Get e-AlertsSUBJECTS:Chemical probes,Immunology,Peptides and proteins,Probes,Proteomics Get e-Alerts

The emerging science of sequences: Bioinformatics: A Practical Guide to the Analysis of Genes and Proteins, edited by Andreas Baxevanis and B. F. Francis Ouellette

The EMBL PhD Student Symposium on Evolution, supported by the European Commission High‐Level Scientific Conferences, was held at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidenberg, Germany, November 9‐10, 2001. This event was organised entirely by PhD students from EMBL and was the second in a continuing series of symposia initiated in 2000 with ‘From Genes to Thoughts’. The next event of this kind, ‘Life within Boundaries: Membranes & Compartments in Biology’, is scheduled for November 14–16, 2002 ![][1] The European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg hosted an exciting 2‐day symposium last November covering various topics of evolution. The symposium was unusual in two respects: first, it had been organised entirely by PhD students; secondly, the invited speakers had been encouraged not only to talk about their most recent work, but also to present a general overview of their field of study. This made the symposium useful for both those specialised in the study of evolution and those committed to other research areas. The central importance of the evolutionary theory in most, if not all, areas of biology cannot be debated. Yet, as researchers often intellectually confined within the boundaries of our experimental paradigms and model organisms, we often forget to look at things from this perspective. The symposium provided an opportunity to experience the thrills and excitement of some of the hot topics in evolutionary theory, including the origin of life and human evolution, and to marvel at some fascinating novel experimental and technological applications, such as in vitro enzyme evolution and evolutionary robotics. ### The early history of life E. Szathmary (Budapest, Hungary) presented some of his views on the origin of life and early molecular evolution (Maynard Smith and Szathmary, 1999). He emphasised that, in this field of research, elegant experiments and intelligent theories could easily prove to be irrelevant. When researchers attempt to … [1]: /embed/graphic-1.gif

ELIXIR unites Europe’s leading life science organisations in managing and safeguarding the increasing volume of data being generated by publicly funded research. It coordinates, integrates and sustains bioinformatics resources across its 22 member states, plus EMBL-EBI (European Molecular Biology Laboratory - European Bioinformatics Institute), and enables end users to access services and data that are vital for their research. ELIXIR's remit spans the full breadth of life science data, including data related to human health, food production (agriculture, farming, aquaculture) and the environment (e.g. pollution remediation, ecology), all of clear socio-economic benefit. As a result, ELIXIR contributes to the delivery of several sustainable development goals. This poster will introduce ELIXIR and describe the contribution it can make to coordinating data and services relevant to biodiversity. The poster will set the context for how molecularly-derived biodiversity occurrence data can significantly enhance resources such as the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS), e.g. by filling in acute gaps in our knowledge of species across realms.