Editorial / Invited Opinion
Are we ready for Plan S?
Paola Bovolenta
Centro de Biología Molecular “Severo Ochoa”, CSIC-UAM and CIBERER, Madrid (Spain).
Academic publications reporting research advances, which have been obtained with the support of public funds, should be readily and freely available to the community and allowed to be used without restriction. Very few researchers, if any, would disagree with this basic concept given that it represents one of the fundamental principles underlying science and humanities progress. By and large, this is what Plan S expects to achieve by the beginning of 2020.…
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beyond Biophysics
Cell Biology and Biophysics: A conversation with Isabel Fabregat-Romero
Carlo Manzo
UVIC-UCC, Vic (Spain).
Often, when asked by freshmen students what Biophysics is, I jokingly tell them to look at the Wikipedia. Those who go beyond the first sentence, containing a formal and rather obvious definition, can read: Biophysical research shares significant overlap with biochemistry, molecular biology, physical chemistry, physiology, nanotechnology, bioengineering, computational biology, biomechanics, developmental biology and systems biology. But then I generally get a second question: Does it mean that biophysics is a bit of everything?…
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cool Biophysics
How do membrane proteins fold?
Ismael Mingarro
ERI BioTecMed, UV, Valencia (Spain).
Membrane-spanning proteins account for 23% of all human genes, and numbers are similar for most other organisms. They serve many essential roles in the cell, including solute transport, signal transduction and energy generation. However, our knowledge on how they achieve their functional structure is still scarce. In fact, the biophysical tools used for characterizing the folding and assembly of transmembrane (TM) proteins are limited in comparison to those available for studying soluble proteins…
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