Craig Montell.

Interview with Craig Montell, whose work focuses on identifying receptors, channels and sensory neurons important in vision, taste, and temperature sensation.

A controversy about chance and the origins of life: thermodynamicist Ilya Prigogine replies to molecular biologist Jacques Monod.

The ancient, interlinked questions about the role of chance in the living world and the origins of life, gained new relevance with the development of molecular biology in the twentieth century. In 1970, French molecular biologist Jacques Monod, joint winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, devoted a popular book on modern biology and its philosophical implications to these questions, which was quickly translated into English as Chance and Necessity. Nine years later, Belgian thermodynamicist Ilya Prigogine, 1977 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, published a popular book on the history and philosophy of natural sciences with Belgian philosopher Isabelle Stengers. Translated into English under the title Order out of Chaos and widely discussed, the whole book can be seen as a response to Monod on these biological and philosophical questions. This study will trace this intellectual controversy between two Nobel Prize winners defending two opposing scientific and philosophical visions of the living world, rooted in two different scientific disciplines.

Historical Advances in Structural and Molecular Biology and How They Impacted Vaccine Development.

Vaccines are among the greatest tools for prevention and control of disease. They have eliminated smallpox from the planet, decreased morbidity and mortality for major infectious diseases like polio, measles, mumps, and rubella, significantly blunted the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and prevented viral induced cancers such as cervical cancer caused by human papillomavirus. Recent technological advances, in genomics, structural biology, and human immunology have transformed vaccine development, enabling new technologies such as mRNA vaccines to greatly accelerate development of new and improved vaccines. In this review, we briefly highlight the history of vaccine development, and provide examples of where advances in genomics and structural biology, paved the way for development of vaccines for bacterial and viral diseases.

"How Many Individuals Consider Themselves to Be Cell Biologists but Are Informed by the Journal That Their Work Is Not Cell Biology".

What can we gain from co-analyzing experimental cultures, regionalization, and disciplinary phenomena of late twentieth century life sciences under our historiographic looking glass? This essay investigates the potential of such a strategy for the case of cell biology after 1960. By merging perspectives from historical epistemology inspired by the work of Hans-Jörg Rheinberger with a focus on boundary work in the realm of scientific publishing, community building, and disciplinary norms, a set of understudied scientific practices is exposed. These practices, historically subsumed under the label descriptive, have been as central in cell biology as hypothesis-driven research aiming at mechanistic explanations of cellular function. Against the background of an increasing molecular-mechanistic imperative in cell biology since the late 1960s, knowledge from descriptive practices was often judged as having low value but was nonetheless frequently cited and considered essential. Investigating the underlying epistemic practices and their interactions with disciplinary gatekeeping phenomena (as policed by journals and learned societies) provides historiographic access to the plurality of experimental cultures of cell biology, scattered into many interdisciplinary research fields-with some of them only partially engaged with mechanistic questions.

Molecularización, genetización y centros de referencia: el Instituto de Bioquímica Clínica de Barcelona (1969-1980) / Molecularization, geneticization and reference centers: the Institute of Clinical Biochemistry of Barcelona (1969-1980)

En conjunto, la molecularización y la genetización de la biomedicina del siglo XX construyeron un enorme listado de enfermedades, la mayoría raras, con unas necesidades asistenciales muy específicas, una gran dependencia del laboratorio e importantes dificulta-des para la creación de expertos. Estos fenómenos indujeron grandes cambios en las redes asistenciales y en los itinerarios diagnósticos. Uno de los más significativos fue la aparición de centros de referencia en los que concentrar los recursos humanos y materiales para enferme-dades tan poco prevalentes. A partir del estudio del Instituto de Bioquímica Clínica “Fundación Juan March” de Barcelona, este artículo aborda la aparición de estos nuevos espacios en la España del Tardofranquismo. Farmacéuticos, pediatras, políticos y gestores sanitarios, con sus diferentes intereses, aparecen como actores involucrados en la forja de un instituto que en pocos años se erigió como centro de referencia nacional para enfermedades de depósito lisosomal. El trabajo revela la importancia que tuvo la sensibilidad social sobre la discapacidad intelectual como motor (y excusa) de la iniciativa, el papel de las fundaciones filantrópicas y la influencia de la ciencia norteamericana en todo el proceso, en circulación a través de los viajes de los científicos españoles al extranjero (AU)

What is in the black box? The discovery of the sigma factor and the subunit structure of E. coli RNA polymerase.

This Reflections article is focused on the 5 years while I was a graduate student (1964-1969). During this period, I made some of the most significant discoveries of my career. I have written this article primarily for a protein biochemistry audience, my colleagues who shared this exciting time in science, and the many scientists over the last 50 years who have contributed to our knowledge of transcriptional machinery and their regulation. It is also written for today's graduate students, postdocs, and scientists who may not know much about the discoveries and technical advances that are now taken for granted, to show that even with methods primitive by today's standards, we were still able to make foundational advances. I also hope to provide a glimpse into how fortunate I was to be a graduate student over 50 years ago in the golden age of molecular biology.

Editor Profile: Brent Derry.

In this special interview series, we profile members of The FEBS Journal editorial board to highlight their research focus and perspectives on the journal and future directions in their field. Brent Derry is Professor at the Department of Molecular Genetics of University of Toronto and Senior Scientist of the Developmental & Stem Cell Biology Program at The Hospital for Sick Children (Toronto, Canada). He has served as an editorial board member of The FEBS Journal since 2017.

The power of perpetual collaboration: An interview with Elçin Ünal and Gloria Brar.

Here, Elçin Ünal and Gloria Brar tell us how the Br-Ün Lab came to be, the cons, but mostly the pros, of running a joint lab and things to consider, as well as their philosophies in research and mentoring a diverse group of scientists.

Meet the authors: Michael Ranes and Sebastian Guettler.

We talk to first and last authors Michael Ranes and Sebastian Guettler about their paper, "Reconstitution of the destruction complex defines roles of AXIN polymers and APC in ß-catenin capture, phosphorylation, and ubiquitylation," how questions at conferences drove the work, the research in the Guettler lab, and Michael's experience as a Black scientist and his hopes for the future.

The shaping of a molecular linguist: How a career studying DNA energetics revealed the language of molecular communication.

My personal and professional journeys have been far from predictable based on my early childhood. Owing to a range of serendipitous influences, I miraculously transitioned from a rebellious, apathetic teenage street urchin who did poorly in school to a highly motivated, disciplined, and ambitious academic honors student. I was the proverbial "late bloomer." Ultimately, I earned my PhD in biophysical chemistry at Yale, followed by a postdoc fellowship at Berkeley. These two meccas of thermodynamics, coupled with my deep fascination with biology, instilled in me a passion to pursue an academic career focused on mapping the energy landscapes of biological systems. I viewed differential energetics as the language of molecular communication that would dictate and control biological structures, as well as modulate the modes of action associated with biological functions. I wanted to be a "molecular linguist." For the next 50 years, my group and I used a combination of spectroscopic and calorimetric techniques to characterize the energy profiles of the polymorphic conformational space of DNA molecules, their differential ligand-binding properties, and the energy landscapes associated with mutagenic DNA damage recognition, repair, and replication. As elaborated below, the resultant energy databases have enabled the development of quantitative molecular biology through the rational design of primers, probes, and arrays for diagnostic, therapeutic, and molecular-profiling protocols, which collectively have contributed to a myriad of biomedical assays. Such profiling is further justified by yielding unique energy-based insights that complement and expand elegant, structure-based understandings of biological processes.

Dr. Alexander Wlodawer-celebrating five decades of service to the structural biology community.

This 75th birthday tribute to our Editorial Board member Alexander Wlodawer recounts his decades-long service to the community of structural biology researchers. His former and current colleagues tell the story of his upbringing and education, followed by an account of his dedication to quality and rigor in crystallography and structural science. The FEBS Journal Editor-in-Chief Seamus Martin further highlights Alex's outstanding contributions to the journal's success over many years.

From integrative structural biology to cell biology.

Integrative modeling is an increasingly important tool in structural biology, providing structures by combining data from varied experimental methods and prior information. As a result, molecular architectures of large, heterogeneous, and dynamic systems, such as the ∼52-MDa Nuclear Pore Complex, can be mapped with useful accuracy, precision, and completeness. Key challenges in improving integrative modeling include expanding model representations, increasing the variety of input data and prior information, quantifying a match between input information and a model in a Bayesian fashion, inventing more efficient structural sampling, as well as developing better model validation, analysis, and visualization. In addition, two community-level challenges in integrative modeling are being addressed under the auspices of the Worldwide Protein Data Bank (wwPDB). First, the impact of integrative structures is maximized by PDB-Development, a prototype wwPDB repository for archiving, validating, visualizing, and disseminating integrative structures. Second, the scope of structural biology is expanded by linking the wwPDB resource for integrative structures with archives of data that have not been generally used for structure determination but are increasingly important for computing integrative structures, such as data from various types of mass spectrometry, spectroscopy, optical microscopy, proteomics, and genetics. To address the largest of modeling problems, a type of integrative modeling called metamodeling is being developed; metamodeling combines different types of input models as opposed to different types of data to compute an output model. Collectively, these developments will facilitate the structural biology mindset in cell biology and underpin spatiotemporal mapping of the entire cell.

How structural biology transformed studies of transcription regulation.

The past 4 decades have seen remarkable advances in our understanding of the structural basis of gene regulation. Technological advances in protein expression, nucleic acid synthesis, and structural biology made it possible to study the proteins that regulate transcription in the context of ever larger complexes containing proteins bound to DNA. This review, written on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Protein Data Bank focuses on the insights gained from structural studies of protein-DNA complexes and the role the PDB has played in driving this research. I cover highlights in the field, beginning with X-ray crystal structures of the first DNA-binding domains to be studied, through recent cryo-EM structures of transcription factor binding to nucleosomal DNA.

Seeing the PDB.

Ever since the first structures of proteins were determined in the 1960s, structural biologists have required methods to visualize biomolecular structures, both as an essential tool for their research and also to promote 3D comprehension of structural results by a wide audience of researchers, students, and the general public. In this review to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Protein Data Bank, we present our own experiences in developing and applying methods of visualization and analysis to the ever-expanding archive of protein and nucleic acid structures in the worldwide Protein Data Bank. Across that timespan, Jane and David Richardson have concentrated on the organization inside and between the macromolecules, with ribbons to show the overall backbone "fold" and contact dots to show how the all-atom details fit together locally. David Goodsell has explored surface-based representations to present and explore biological subjects that range from molecules to cells. This review concludes with some ideas about the current challenges being addressed by the field of biomolecular visualization.