The first issue of the HFSP Journal is now available

 

Strasbourg, May 30th 2007

HFSP Publishing is proud to announce the publication of the first issue of 
the HFSP Journal, Frontiers of Interdisciplinary Research in the Life 
Sciences which is available online free of charge at http://hfspj.aip.org 

The HFSP Journal is a new journal which aims to foster communication 
between scientists publishing high quality, innovative interdisciplinary 
research at the interface between biology and the physical sciences. 

The first issue features:

• An Editorial from the Editor-in-Chief Arturo Falaschi from the 
International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology in Trieste 
and the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa in Italy which discusses the new 
frontiers of research in the life sciences, many of which require 
approaches from other scientific disciplines.

• An Editorial from the President of HFSP Publishing, Mark Bisby from 
Ottawa, Canada which explains that the HFSP Journal aims to further the 
goals of the Human Frontier Science Program to promote innovative basic 
research at the interface between the life sciences and the physical 
sciences.

• A Commentary from Paul De Koninck from the Centre de Recherche 
Université Laval Robert Giffard, Université Laval, Québec, in Canada and 
his colleagues which discusses a recent study of synaptic signaling and 
remodeling by quantum dot imaging from Daniel Choquet’s group.

• A Commentary from Jonathon Howard and Iva Tolic-Norrelykke from the Max 
Planck Institute for Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany which 
discusses two recent articles from François Nédélec’s group which address 
the issue of how cortex-microtubule interactions position the mitotic 
spindle by a combination of experimental and theoretical approaches.

• A Perspective from pioneers in the fields of single molecule imaging and 
manipulation of single molecules, Yoshiharu Ishii and Toshio Yanagida from 
the Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences at the University of Osaka in 
Japan, which reviews the insight such approaches have provided into the 
visualization of the dynamic operations of molecular motors, enzymatic 
reactions, structural dynamics of biomolecules, and cell signaling 
processes. 

• A Perspective from Kenji Doya from the Neural Computational Unit at the 
Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in, Japan which reviews basic 
the theoretical framework of reinforcement learning which was developed in 
the artificial intelligence community and discusses its recent and future 
contributions toward the understanding of animal behaviors and human 
decision making. 

 • An Article from the Wiltschko lab at J. W. Goethe-University in 
Frankfurt, Germany and Thorsten Ritz at the Department of Physics and 
Astronomy of the University of California in, Irvine, California reporting 
on an interdisciplinary study combines behavioral zoology neurobiology and 
biophysics to further the current level of understanding of 
magnetoreception and bird migration.

 • An Article by Ajay and Bhalla from the National Centre for Biological 
Sciences at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Bangalore, India 
who combined experiments and models to shed light onto the mechanisms by 
which ERKII signaling spreads long distances in apical dendrites of 
stimulated hippocampal pyramidal neurons.
 • Two Articles by Erich Bornberg-Bauer at the Institute for Evolution and 
Biodiversity, School of Biological Sciences, University of Münster, 
Germany and his coworkers and by Dan Tawfik and colleagues from the 
Department of Biological Chemistry at the Weizmann Institute of Science 
in, Rehovot, Israel which together report on a multidisciplinary study 
combining theory, computational and experimental work that offers an 
intriguing new perspective on the evolution of new functions. The study by 
Bornberg-Bauer and colleagues addresses the biophysical basis of how 
mutational paths that seem to be neutral with respect to the dominant 
phenotype under selection can allow adaptive evolution by selecting a 
latent phenotype. The article by Tawfik et al. reports on an experimental 
analysis of protein evolution and provides the first direct evidence of 
the existence of latent evolution.

The Editorial Board of the HFSP Journal represents 5 distinguished 
scientists from different disciplines but each with a strong focus on 
living systems:- 
•	Arturo Falaschi  (International Centre for Genetic Engineering and 
Biotechnology, Trieste and Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, Italy).
•	Marcelo Magnasco (Department of Physics, Rockefeller University), 
•	Peter Seeberger (Department of Chemistry, ETH Zurich, 
Switzerland), 
•	Dan Kiehart (Department of Biology, Duke University) and 
•	Mitsuo Kawato (ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, Kyoto 
University, Japan)

The HFSP Journal offers its authors the option to pay a fee to make their 
research articles Open Access immediately upon publication. For other 
articles, access is limited to subscribers for the first 6 months after 
publication, and access will be free thereafter. The HFSP Journal is be 
published online and in print. 

The HFSP Journal is operated by HFSP Publishing the not-for-profit 
publisher of the leading international funding agency the Human Frontier 
Science Program Organization (HFSPO). This international funding agency 
has been supporting innovative research at the frontier of biology since 
its establishment in 1989. 

Contact:
Dr. Valerie Ferrier
Managing Editor
Tel + 33 (0) 3 88 21 52 83
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http://hfspj.aip.org