It is not unknown for a computational chemist to labor over an algorithm, carefully designing and refining his methods, only to be told by a computer scientist that the method was published in an abstract form in the informatics literature a decade earlier. In the same vein, a protein chemist may waste time and resources, unaware of a spectroscopic technique routinely used by colloid chemists specializing in toothpaste rheology. One aim of this journal is to help prevent these tragedies and bring together theory and experiment from pure physical chemistry to biological applications.
In these terms, this issue is a model. For example, surface plasmon resonance really has revolutionized studies of binding to biological macromolecules, but here we have an application to polymer swelling. Similarly, the simulation methods applied to cholera toxin/lipid membranes are typical of those used for coarse‐grained systems in biology and polymer systems. Continuing in this vein, it is a pleasure to have an article on density functional theory applied in a classical context. For too long, these techniques have been the domain of quantum chemists and are not yet applied as often as they should be to classical systems.
Bridging fields also includes overviews and tutorials. This issue includes an excellent overview of a class of membrane‐based separation methods, written to be able to introduce the ideas to non‐specialists. Furthermore, we have asked permission to use an article on single molecule deformation and relaxation. Although it is part of a forthcoming book, we wanted to present it to a wider audience because of its special relevance. Single molecule stretching (and relaxation) is a lively area where the experimental methods are evolving, the interpretation is still debated, and the modeling methods have ranged from classical atomistic simulations to entropic springs. Even better, the methods that were originally the province of polymer chemists have been applied to large proteins and are becoming a tool in protein folding/unfolding studies.
We are pleased with the current scope of the journal and intend to maintain the emphases on quality and multidisciplinary topics.
Andrew Torda
Zentrum für Bioinformatik
University of Hamburg
Hamburg, Germany