Biophysical Society Newsletter - October 2014

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BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER

2014

OCTOBER

Biophysical Journal Corner

Know the Editors

Issue Highlights Don’t miss these highlights in the October 7 issue of Biophysical Journal .

Alan Grodzinsky Massachusetts Institute of Technology Editor for Systems Biophysics Section

To read the articles visit www.biophysj.org.

Biophysical Review:

Alan Grodzinsky

Hugh E. Huxley: The Compleat Biophysicist by Sarah Hitchcock-DeGregori and Thomas Irving. New & Notables Monitoring of Single Vesicle Cytochrome c Release Illuminates BAK as a Novel Target of Abeta Oligomers by Daniel Linseman, which highlights the paper Beta-Amyloid Oligomers Activate Apoptotic BAK Pore for Cytochrome c Release by Jaewook Kim, Yoosoo Yang, Seung Soo Song, Jung-Hyun Na, Cherlhyun Jeong, and Yeon Gyu Yu. Channelrhodopsin Photochromic Reactions Provide Multi-Color Optogenetic Control by John Spudich, which highlights the paper Imaging GFP-Based Reporters in Neurons with Multi-Wavelength Optogenetic Control by Adam Cohen and Veena Venkatachalam. The Many Roles of a Journal Publisher Have you ever wondered what a journal publisher does besides facilitating the peer review of manuscripts? Last year, the blog Scholarly Kitchen posted a piece by Kent Anderson that lists 73 things publishers do. Biophysical Journal partners with Cell Press to perform many of these functions.

Q: What is your area of research? Our group focuses on problems motivated by diseases of the musculoskeletal system includ- ing arthritis, connective tissue pathologies, and, more generally, the molecular biophysics of the extracellular matrix (ECM). As an example, it is well known that traumatic joint injury in humans causes cartilage degeneration and progression to post-traumatic osteoarthritis, but the mechanobio- logical mechanisms governing cellular transcrip- tion, translation, and post-translational responses to physical overload are not well understood. We use genomic and proteomic tools to identify key pathways associated with mechanical injury and the resulting cell-mediated proteolytic degrada- tion of the ECM. Atomic force microscopy and related biophysical tools are used to image and probe the molecular structure of ECM proteogly- cans and proteins synthesized by connective tissue cells in health and disease. Nanoindentation at the molecular, cellular, and tissue levels aids in the discovery of molecular determinants underlying tissue pathology. Complementary projects focus on chondrogenesis of stem cells seeded within self- assembling peptide hydrogel scaffolds for repair of degraded or osteoarthritic cartilage. The molecu- lar fine structure of stem cell-synthesized ECM molecules and the responses of these stem cells to physiological loading during and after differentia- tion are studied in vitro . Concurrent studies using small and large animal models are ongoing. Finally, there are currently no available disease-modifying drugs for osteoarthritis due, in part, to lack of appropriate delivery modalities. We are, therefore, studying the ability of electrostatic interactions linked to charged ECM molecules within target tissues to enable enhanced uptake, rapid penetra- tion, and retention of potential therapeutics.

View the blog post at http://bit.ly/1kLu3Y6.