At the end of March Alex Toker retired as Vice Chair Reviews for the Biochemical Journal after 8 years in the role. During his tenure he commissioned many highly cited reviews which have been well received by readers and introduced new initiatives for BJ reviews, including animated figures and interactive 3D structures.

At the recent meeting of the Editorial Board in Beijing, Peter Shepherd, Chair of the Editorial Board, paid tribute to Alex's excellent work and long service to the Journal, and presented him with a gift to mark his retirement from the Editorial Board.

Alex's role in commissioning reviews has now been taken on by Guy Salvesen, who adds the role of Reviews Editor to his role as Vice Chair, the Americas. Proposals for review articles should now be sent to Guy via the US Editorial Office (editorial@biochemjusa.org).

At the recent 2013 Editorial Board Meeting in Beijing, Professor Andrew Munro (University of Manchester, UK) was awarded the Editor of the Year trophy for handling the most papers in 2012.

We congratulate Professor Sir Philip Cohen, ex-President of the Biochemical Society and recipient of an Outstanding Contributor Award from the Biochemical Journal in June of last year, on the receipt of the Medical Research Council's Millennium Medal, one of the most prestigious awards in medical research. For further information concerning this award, including an interview with Professor Cohen, see here.

Polyamine production is downstream and upstream of oncogenic PI3K signalling and contributes to tumour cell growth

PI3K is a name given to a family of enzymes that are involved in cell growth, proliferation, differentiation and many other cellular functions.

These enzymes are also implicated in many cancers and PI3K signalling is a target for treatments.

Now, researchers at Bart's Cancer Institute in London have discovered a previously unrecognized mechanism by which PI3K sustains the proliferation of cancer cells. It appears that PI3K modulates the concentration of spermidine, a polyamine involved in cellular metabolism.

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Portland Press Limited (PPL), the wholly-owned trading subsidiary of the Biochemical Society, has today announced that it will invite authors to use the CC-BY (Creative Commons Attribution) licence for papers published in its two Gold Open Access journals ASN NEURO and Bioscience Reports. This allows authors to comply fully with recent changes in funding body policies.

This change in licensing arrangements also applies to papers published under the Opt2Pay (Gold Open Access) option in Portland Press's hybrid journals, which include the long-standing, core title the Biochemical Journal, Biochemical Society Transactions and the clinical research publication Clinical Science.

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Peter Shepherd and the Editorial staff of the Biochemical Journal wish to thank the following members of the Editorial Board for their dedicated and longstanding service to, and support of, the journal. The list of retiring Editorial Board members is:

Marta Cascante

Declan Doyle

Colin Duckett

Peter Gettins

David Litchfield

Ben Luisi

Jan Miernyk

Cheryll Tickle

Special thanks to Mike Blatt who retires from his post as Deputy Chair in the BJ Plant Knowledge Environment.

As a New Year's gift to our readers, The Biochemical Society and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Portland Press Limited, have announced that all of its subscription-based journals, including the Biochemical Journal have been made entirely free to access online until 1st February 2013.
View our other titles here:

Biochemical Society Transactions
Essays in Biochemistry
Clinical Science
Biochemical Society Symposia
Bioscience Reports

We congratulate Dr Sarah Teichmann on the award of the Francis Crick 2012 Lecture, which is given annually in any field in the biological sciences (although preference is assigned to genetics, molecular biology and neurobiology), in recognition of her ground-breaking work in structural bioinformatics. The lecture is to take place on 21 November at the Royal Society, and is free to attend. For further information, see http://royalsociety.org/events/2012/patterns-in-genes/

Biochemical Journal Vice Chair (Asia-Pacific) and Director of Institute of Biophysics, Professor Tao Xu was the Chair at the recent 3^rd International and 12^th National Symposium on Membrane Biology (3^rd ISMB/12^th NSMB) which were held in Zhuhai City, China from 7-10 November 2012.

The Biochemical Journal Editorial Board are delighted to announce that Dr David Komander (BJ Signal Editor) has been awarded a 2012 Lister Institute Research Prize.

Dr David Komander studied in Germany and graduated from the MRC Protein Phosphorylation Unit in Dundee, Scotland. Subsequent work as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Prof David Barford at the Insitute of Cancer Research, London, introduced him to protein ubiquitination. The research of Dr Komander aims to unravel the emerging complexity in the ubiquitin system. Protein ubiquitination is a posttranslational modification of proteins that affects virtually all cellular processes. Its versatility is enabled by ubiquitin's ability to form different types of polymers, but so far only a small subset has been studied in detail. To reveal the functions of unstudied ubiquitin polymers, the Komander lab tries to identify proteins that specifically make, bind or cleave atypical ubiquitin chains. The lab recently showed that many enzymes of the ubiquitination are highly linkage-specific, enabling a first definition of cellular roles for these new posttranslational modifications.

Visit The Lister Institute of Preventative Medicine for more information

More information is available here.

The Biochemical Journal's Editorial Board and Portland Press Limited are delighted to announce that the 2011 Impact Factor (4.897), released by Thomson Reuters in the 2012 JCR, is in the top Quartile ranking in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology category. The Journal continues to increase its Article Influence Score (1.858) confirming that it publishes high-quality articles in a timely manner and provides authors with a painless route for disseminating their research to their peers.

The Journal has risen significantly in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology category over the last 5 years, increasing its Impact Factor by over 22%, while other journals in the same field have seen their Impact Factors fall.

Peter Shepherd, Chair of the Editorial Board, said "Our policy of publishing high-quality work without the need for unnecessary extra experimentation has proven extremely attractive to authors looking to maximise the impact of their work through publication in an established journal".

The Journal, owned by the Biochemical Society, is supported by an international Editorial Board and has Editorial Offices in London, San Diego and Beijing.

Professor Barry Potter of the University of Bath has been named "Investigator of the Year 2012" at the European Life Sciences Award ceremony held in Hamburg, Germany. This prestigious award recognizes outstanding accomplishments in the global life sciences arena, specifically at the interface of chemistry with biology and medicine.

At the recent 2012 Editorial Board Meeting in San Diego, Professor Juan Bolanos (University of Salamanca, Spain) was awarded the Editor of the Year trophy for handling the most papers in 2011. This is the fourth year in succession that Professor Bolanos has received this award.

The Protein Society has awarded The Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Award for 2012 to Professor Mark A. Lemmon (University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine) for his major contributions to the field of signal transduction and transmembrane signalling mechanisms of receptor tyrosine kinases.This Award is granted in recognition of exceptional contributions in protein science, which profoundly influence our understanding of biology.

Congratulations to our competition winner Professor Karl L Magleby who won an iPad2 at the 56th Biophysical Society Annual Meeting.

We are pleased to announce the recent appointment of the following Editor(s) to the Board:

Kristen W. Lynch (Philadelphia, USA)

Kei Sakamoto (Lausanne, Switzerland)

Vinay Tergaonkar (Singapore)

New Zealand's top science and technology honour, the Rutherford Medal, has been awarded to a woman for the first time. Professor Christine Winterbourn has been awarded the Royal Society of New Zealand medal at the recent Research Honours celebration event in Wellington.

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Professor Dario Alessi, the Vice-Chair for Europe of the Biochemical Journal, has been appointed as the next Director of the Medical Research Council's (MRC) Protein Phosphorylation Unit at the University of Dundee. He will take over from the current Director, Sir Philip Cohen, in April 2012.

Further information on this appointment

The new Impact Factor for the Biochemical Journal is 5.016 in the 2010 JCR released by ISI in June.

Peter Shepherd, Chair of the Editorial Board, said "We are delighted with the latest ISI data for the journal, which reinforce the continued relevance of the journal to the cellular and molecular life sciences community."

"Since the Impact Factor first broke the 5 bar in June 2010 (JCR 2009), the journal has seen a significant increase in submissions of high-quality papers in all nine Knowledge Environments and we expect this trend will be maintained over the coming months as we continue to make the publishing process easier for authors."

Submit your paper today!

The Biochemical Society today announced the appointment of Caroline Black as the new Managing Director of their publishing division, Portland Press Limited. Caroline, who will also be the Group Head of Publishing for the Society, has had a lifetime's experience in STM (science, technology and medicine) publishing, having previously worked for the British Institute of Radiology, Thomson Science, Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, Blackwell Publishing and Mac Keith Press.

Find out more about this new appointment on Biochemist E-volution

Take a look at our spotlight on the Chair of the Biochemical Journal Editorial Board, Peter Shepherd. Peter talks about his life and work and the benefits of publishing in the Biochemical Journal.

BJ Metabolism welcomes Professor David Carling (London), who has joined Dr Laurie Goodyear (Boston) as a Deputy Chair.

Officially opened today (4th May 2011) at the prestigious and internationally renowned Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, in Beijing, the Biochemical Journal is very honoured to have a presence in China and now offers authors in China the opportunity to submit their papers directly to the Beijing office in order to receive a faster, more supportive service.

BJ Gene welcomes Dr Javier Caceres (Edinburgh), who has joined Stefan Roberts (Buffalo, NY) as a Deputy Chair.

At the recent 2011 Editorial Board Meeting, Professor Juan Bolanos (University of Salamanca, Spain) was awarded the Editor of the Year trophy for handling the most papers in 2010. This is the third year in succession that Professor Bolanos has received this award.

Professor Marta Cascante (University of Barcelona) has been named as one of the winners of the Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) awards for excellence in research. She will receive her award at a ceremony to be held at the University of Barcelona on 25 March.

We have reached an agreement with F1000 to make available each month three evaluations of articles from the Biochemical Journal from the F1000 website. These evaluations help to put the articles in context and provide opinion and perspective from leading researchers working in the field. In addition, we will include the F1000 Factor beside articles that have been evaluated by F1000 from the Biochemical Journal - highlighting how many of the Journal's articles have been selected and rated as important by the F1000 service.

As part of the Biochemical Society's Centenary celebrations, a number of the Society's Honorary members have been asked to talk about the important moments in their careers and the future of the discipline.

The first interview released today is 'Eureka Moments: The key that unlocked calcium' in which Professor Sir Michael Berridge talks to Professor Robin Irvine about his 'Eureka Moment' in calcium signalling and his passion for trying to find the solution to interesting problems.

Watch the video interview at http://www.biochemistry.org/Centenary/EurekaMoments or take a behind the scenes look at the production on the Society's Flickr photostream

Sharon Stack has been named Ann F. Dunne and Elizabeth Riley Science Director of the Mike and Josie Harper Cancer Research Institute and professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Notre Dame. More details

David Komander (MRC Laboratory for Molecular Biology, Cambridge) has been selected for the EMBO Young Investigator Programme. These outstanding young group leaders are selected annually by EMBO members for their high research standards.

Papers now provide links to citing papers through the CrossRef linking service