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BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER
6
AUGUST
2017
Biophysical Journal
Know the Editors
Dimitrios Stamou
University of Copenhagen
Editor, Membranes
Q.
What are you currently
working on that excites you?
We have been studying the physical shape or
curvature of cellular membranes. I am really
excited about this line of research because it turns
out curvature is affecting all physical properties
of membranes and membrane-associated pro-
teins that we have studied to date. Consequently,
dynamic modulation of membrane curvature is
emerging as a pluripotent modus operandi for
regulating cellular membrane biology.
Q.
What has been your most exciting
discovery as a biophysicist?
I got my PhD from an engineering school in
Lausanne, in the group of
Horst Vogel
. Those
years had a formative influence on my approach
to science, so as a PI I always tried to engineer
new tools or methods, but now it is for the sake of
gaining new insights to fundamental properties of
biological systems.
The single most important method we have
developed to date is a novel way to record ionic
currents that so far has a sensitivity about one mil-
lion times greater than the gold standard method
of patch clamp. This method enabled us to
resolve, for the first time, the attoampere currents
mediated by single transporters. The first system
we investigated was a homologue of the Na+, K+
ATPase which consumes up to 70 percent of ATP
in the brain. The key discovery we made here was
that ensemble average transport is a non-trivial
convolution of multiple competing processes
(active, inactive, and leaky functional states).
These states turned out to be of crucial biological
importance, because they appear to underlie the
regulation of transport, in analogy to the open/
closed states of ion channels.
Q.
Who would you like to sit next
to at a dinner party?
Anyone who is at peace with themselves.
I consider this to be the most precious commod-
ity, plus it’s contagious.
Why Publish in
BJ
?
If you submit your work to
Biophysical Journal
,
here is what you can expect:
• Rapid turnaround times
• No page limits
• Rigorous and constructive peer review
by working scientists
• Affordable publication fees with discounts
for BPS members
• Author friendly pre-print policy
• Policies that promote transparency
and data sharing
• Hybrid journal with Open Access and
licensing options
• Publisher deposits to Pub Med;
compliance with federal agency policies
• Broad focus, wide dissemination
• Easy submission with ORCID IDs
• Authors receive link to share their
article for 50 days
• Opportunities to have your work highlighted
in cover art, sliders, video clips, news releases,
the BPS Newsletter, and more
• Automatic consideration for the
Paper of the Year Award
Dimitrios Stamou