Editors for Biochemistry and Chemical Biology

We aim to publish studies that provide new mechanistic insights into the structure, function, and regulation of biological molecules including proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, carbohydrates, and natural products. In addition, we are interested in studies that illuminate complex biological processes using chemical tools and approaches. Read the latest research in this subject area.

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Senior editors

Philip Cole

Harvard Medical School, United States

Phil Cole is Professor of Medicine and Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at Harvard Medical School and is a Senior Investigator in the Division of Genetics at Brigham and Women's Hospital. He graduated from Yale University with a B.S. in Chemistry and then spent a year as a Churchill Scholar at the University of Cambridge prior to obtaining M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine where he pursued research in bioorganic chemistry. Cole then entered post-doctoral and clinical training at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital. He subsequently held faculty positions at Rockefeller University and then Johns Hopkins where he was Chair of Pharmacology prior to returning to Harvard in 2017. His research interests are related to the chemical biology of cell signaling and epigenetics. His group has developed and applied methods for protein semisynthesis and small molecule probes for kinases, acyltransferases, deacetylases, and demethylases. His honors include election to the ASCI, fellow of the AAAS, and receipt of an NIH MERIT award.

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology

Research focus
chemical biology
signal transduction
epigenetics

Competing interests statement
Philip Cole is on the Scientific Advisory Boards of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, the Maryland Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology Research, and the Searle Scholars Program. He is a cofounder of Acylin Therapeutics Inc and a science advisor for the Abbvie, Epizyme, and Forma companies and has been a consultant for MPM Capital. Cole has received research funding from the NIH, the FAMRI foundation, and the V Foundation. He is a member of the editorial boards of the following journals: J Biol Chem, Biomed Central Biology, ChemBioChem, and Bioorganic Chemistry.
Ivan Dikic

Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany

Ivan Dikic is a Professor and Chairman of Institute of Biochemistry II at the Medical School Goethe University and a member of the Buchmann Institute for Molecular Life Sciences in Frankfurt. He was trained as a medical doctor at Zagreb University and obtained his PhD in molecular biology with Joseph Schlessinger. His career is focused on studying intracellular signaling initially via protein tyrosine kinases where he revealed how multiple monoubiquitination controls EGFR endocytosis. His lab has pioneered a concept of Ubiquitin as a multivalent cellular signal that regulates multitude of physiological and pathophysiological processes including DNA repair, inflammation, cancer, infection and proteasomal degradation. Ivan’s group also provided structural and functional evidence for a new type of Ub chains that are Met1-linked (called linear ubiquitination) in promoting the NF-kB signaling. His current interests focus on selective autophagy, which is essential for the clearance of protein aggregates, pathogens, and damaged mitochondria from the cell. He has received many awards for his work including the AACR Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cancer Research, the Award of European Association for Cancer Research, the Hans Krebs Prize, the Leibniz Award and the Ernst Jung Award in Medicine. He is a Member of the German Academy for Sciences Leopoldina, Academia Europaea, Croatian Academy of Medical Sciences and the European Molecular Biology Organization.

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Cell Biology

Research focus
ubiquitination
autophagy
endocytosis
inflammation
cancer biology

Competing interests statement
Ivan Dikic receives funding from the Deutsche Forshungsemeinschaft and European Union, and serves as a Scientific Advisory Board member of the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center of Protein Research Copenhagen, MRC Phosphorylation and Ubiquitination Unit Dundee, DKFZ-ZMBH Allianz. He is a chairman of the EMBO Publication Committee and is on the editorial boards of Cell, Molecular Cell, Developmental Cell, EMBO Journal, EMBO Reports, BMC Biology, Biochemical Journal, and Cell Death and Differentiation.
John Kuriyan

University of California, Berkeley, United States

John Kuriyan is Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology and also of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. Before this, he was on the faculty at The Rockefeller University, New York, where he began his career in 1987, leaving for Berkeley in 2001. Since 1990, he has been an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Kuriyan completed undergraduate studies in chemistry at Juniata College, Huntingdon, PA. His doctoral research, on the dynamics of proteins, was carried out at MIT, under the guidance of Greg Petsko and Martin Karplus (Harvard University). Kuriyan’s research is aimed at understanding the structure and mechanism of the enzymes and molecular switches that carry out cellular signal transduction and DNA replication. His laboratory uses x-ray crystallography to determine the three-dimensional structures of proteins involved in signaling and replication, as well as biochemical, biophysical, and computational analyses to elucidate mechanisms. Kuriyan was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2001.

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics

Research focus
protein science and biochemistry
signaling
crystallography
electron microscopy
modeling
molecular dynamics

Competing interests statement
John Kuriyan has received funding from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the US National Institutes of Health, and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. He serves on the editorial board of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and on the Scientific Advisory Boards of Carmot Therapeutics (San Francisco) and Jubilant Biosys (Bangalore). He is a founder of Nurix (San Francisco).
Vivek Malhotra

The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Spain

Vivek Malhotra was a professor in the biology division at UC San Diego from 2007 and is now the ICREA Professor and Chair of the Cell and Developmental Biology at Center for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona. His research focuses on a central station of the secretory pathway, the Golgi complex. Specifically, his work has resulted in the identification of the machinery required for the sorting and packaging of secretory cargoes. His recent work has uncovered a novel secretory routing that bypasses the conventional pathway of protein secretion. He has identified new genes required for the export of bulky collagens and the regulated secretion of mucins. He received his BSc from Stirling University and was a Pirie–Reid scholar at Oxford; a Damon Runyon Walter Winchell and an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow at Stanford; and Basil O’Conner scholar, established Investigator of the American Heart Association, and Senior Investigator of Sandler’s Foundation for Asthma at UC San Diego. He received the MERCK award from the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, is a fellow of the American association of the arts and science, and is an elected EMBO member.

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Cell Biology

Research focus
Golgi apparatus: biogenesis, structure, and function
Collagen and Mucin secretion

Competing interests statement
Vivek Malhotra receives funding from ERC/European Research Council, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, AGAUR and the Plan Nacional (Spain) He is a Scientific Advisory Board member of TIGEM (Naples, Italy), CNR (Naples, Italy), CBMSO (Madrid, Spain) and Department of Biotechnology (India). He has served on the editorial board of Cell and was an associate editor of Molecular Biology of the Cell. He is currently on the editorial boards of Journal of Cell Biology and Current Opinion in Cell Biology.
Michael Marletta

University of California, Berkeley, United States

Michael Marletta is the Aldo DeBenedictis Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Previous to his appointment at UC Berkeley, he was a former President and CEO of The Scripps Research Institute. He has also been on the faculty of the University of Michigan, where he was an HHMI Investigator, and MIT. Marletta obtained an A.B. in chemistry and biology from the State University of New York at Fredonia, a Ph.D. from UCSF under George Kenyon and, after a postdoctoral appointment at MIT under Chris Walsh, began his independent career. His work has spanned protein chemistry and enzymology. He has made many contributions to our understanding of nitric oxide signaling and more generally in molecular mechanisms of gas sensing in eukaryotes and prokaryotes. More recent studies have involved novel enzymes involved with cellulose degradation. Marletta is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology

Research focus
chemical biology
nitric oxide signaling
gas sensing
structural basis of enzyme activity

Experimental organism
E. coli
human

Competing interests statement
Michael Marletta has received funding from the NIH, HHMI, and Burroughs-Wellcome Fund. He was a member of the PNAS Editorial Board (until July 2012) and Biochemistry. He is a Scientific Advisory Board member of Lycera, Inc., Galleon Pharmaceuticals, Viamet Pharmaceuticals, and N30. He serves on the Scientific Review Board of HHMI. He is an External Review Board member of the Vanderbilt Institute of Chemical Biology, Georgia Tech School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Chair, Natural Science Advisory Council, SUNY Fredonia. He is a co-founder of Omniox, Inc.
Cynthia Wolberger

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, United States

Cynthia Wolberger is a Professor of Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, whose faculty she joined in 1991. She received her AB in Physics from Cornell University and her PhD in Biophysics from Harvard University, where she did thesis work on the structural basis of protein-DNA interactions under the guidance of Steve Harrison and Mark Ptashne. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco with Bob Stroud, she worked on the crystal structures of homeodomain-DNA complexes in the laboratory of Carl Pabo at Johns Hopkins. Her earlier worked focused on the structural basis for combinatorial regulation of gene expression and the molecular mechanisms of the sirtuin family of protein deacetylases. Her current research centers on the mechanisms by which ubiquitin plays a signaling role in transcription and the DNA damage response. Wolberger was a recipient of the David and Lucile Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, a March of Dimes–Basil O’Conor Starter Scholar Award, and an American Cancer Society Junior Faculty Award, and was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator from 1994–2014. She received the Protein Society’s Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin Award and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Expertise
Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
Chromosomes and Gene Expression
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology

Research focus
x-ray crystallography
enzymology
transcriptional regulation
ubiquitin signaling

Competing interests statement
Cynthia Wolberger receives funding from the National Institutes of Health and the US–Israel Binational Science Foundation. She chairs the Scientific Advisory Committee of the RCSB Protein Data Bank and is on the external scientific advisory boards of the Advanced Photon Source and the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany. She is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Protein Science, the Editorial Boards of Structure and Current Opinion in Structural Biology, and is a Faculty of 1000 section head in Transcription and Translation. Wolberger is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Reviewing editors

James Berger

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, United States

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics

Research focus
x-ray crystallography
electron microscopy
biochemistry
biophysics
DNA replication
ATPase mechanism
DNA topology
topoisomerases
helicases

Experimental organism
B. subtilis
D. melanogaster
E. coli
human
S. cerevisiae
Douglas L Black

University of California, Los Angeles, United States

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Chromosomes and Gene Expression

Research focus
pre-mRNA splicing
post-transcriptional gene regulation
Michael R Botchan

University of California, Berkeley, United States

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Chromosomes and Gene Expression

Research focus
DNA replication
DNA repair

Experimental organism
Drosophila
Agnieszka Chacinska

University of Warsaw, Poland

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Cell Biology

Research focus
mitochondria
organelles
protein biogenesis
protein degradation
protein transport

Experimental organism
human
S. cerevisiae
Jon Clardy

Harvard Medical School, United States

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Ecology
Microbiology and Infectious Disease

Research focus
microbial secondary metabolism
chemical communications
biosynthesis
chemical biology
microbial chemical ecology
Ben Cravatt

Scripps Research Institute, United States

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology

Research focus
chemical biology
proteomics
neurochemistry
pharmacology

Experimental organism
human
mouse
Irwin Davidson

Institut de Genetique et de Biologie Moleculaire et Cellulaire, CNRS/INSERM/UDS, France

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Cancer Biology
Chromosomes and Gene Expression

Research focus
transcription
chromatin
genomics
cancer

Experimental organism
human
mouse
Raymond J Deshaies

California Institute of Technology, United States

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology

Research focus
protein degradation
proteasome
proteolysis
ubiquitin
Paul G Falkowski

Rutgers University, United States

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
Ecology

Research focus
coral biology
biogeochemical cycles
biological oceanography
evolution of photosynthesis
physiological adaptation
symbiosis
Jose Faraldo-Gomez

National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health, United States

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics

Research focus
Computational biophysics
molecular computation
membrane proteins
Matthew Freeman

University of Oxford, United Kingdom

Expertise
Cell Biology
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology

Research focus
cell signalling
trafficking
quality control

Experimental organism
Drosophila
Reid Gilmore

University of Massachusetts Medical School, United States

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology

Research focus
endoplasmic reticulum
protein translocation

Experimental organism
S. cerevisiae
Rachel Green

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, United States

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Chromosomes and Gene Expression

Research focus
mechanism of translation (bacterial and eukaryotic)
ribosome profiling
mRNA decay
translational control
ribosomes
Nikolaus Grigorieff

Janelia Research Campus, United States

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics

Research focus
cryo-EM
image processing
Franz-Ulrich Hartl

Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Germany

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics

Research focus
protein folding
molecular chaperones
neurodegenerative disorders
Manajit Hayer-Hartl

Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Germany

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics

Research focus
molecular chaperones
protein folding and assembly
protein misfolding and aggregation
molecular machines
Ramanujan S Hegde

MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, United Kingdom

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Cell Biology

Research focus
protein translocation
endoplasmic reticulum
quality control
protein degradation
membrane protein insertion
protein aggregation
in vitro reconstitution
Mary B Kennedy

California Institute of Technology, United States

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Computational and Systems Biology
Neuroscience

Research focus
synaptic plasticity
synaptic regulation
biochemical signal transduction networks
systems biology

Experimental organism
mouse
rat
Werner Kuhlbrandt

Max Planck Institute for Biophysics, Germany

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
Cell Biology

Research focus
membrane protein structure and function
membrane transporters
macromolecular complexes
molecular bioenergetics
membrane proteins
cryo-EM

Experimental organism
E. coli
S. cerevisiae
Andrei Lupas

Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Germany

Expertise
Computational and Systems Biology
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics

Research focus
origins and evolution of folded proteins
coiled coils
bioinformatics
transmembrane signal tranduction
bacterial surface proteins
Andreas Martin

University of California, Berkeley, United States

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics

Research focus
AAA+ ATPases
protein degradation
proteostasis
ATPase mechanism
protein folding
Noboru Mizushima

University of Tokyo, Japan

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Cell Biology

Research focus
protein degradation
lysosome
autophagy
Hitoshi Nakatogawa

Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan

Expertise
Cell Biology
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology

Research focus
molecular mechanisms of autophagy
protein/organelle degradation
membrane dynamics

Experimental organism
S. cerevisiae
Geeta Narlikar

University of California, San Francisco, United States

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics

Research focus
chromatin
heterochromatin spread
chromatin remodeling machines
Timothy Nilsen

Case Western Reserve University, United States

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Chromosomes and Gene Expression

Research focus
mRNA processing
mechanism of miRNA function
RNA protein interactions
mRNP composition and function
RNA biology

Experimental organism
Drosophila
Kim Orth

University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, United States

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Microbiology and Infectious Disease

Research focus
Virulence factors
Type III secretion
pathogenesis
autophagy

Experimental organism
Vibrio spp
E. coli
human
S. cerevisiae
Jon Pines

Institute of Cancer Research, University College London, United Kingdom

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Cell Biology

Research focus
cyclins and anaphase promoting complex/cycosome (APC/C)
cell cycle
mitosis
spindle assembly checkpoint

Experimental organism
human
Arun Radhakrishnan

University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, United States

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Cell Biology
Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics

Research focus
cholesterol sensors
cholesterol transport
endoplasmic reticulum

Experimental organism
E. coli
human
mouse
Michael Rape

University of California, Berkeley, United States

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Cell Biology

Research focus
ubiquitin
mitosis

Experimental organism
human
David Ron

Cambridge University, United Kingdom

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Cell Biology

Research focus
chaperones
unfolded protein response
oxidative protein folding
protein synthesis

Experimental organism
C. elegans
E. coli
human
mouse
S. cerevisiae
Tricia Serio

The University of Massachusetts, Amherst, United States

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Cell Biology

Research focus
prion
protein misfolding
chaperones
amyloid

Experimental organism
S. cerevisiae
Nima Sharifi

Cleveland Clinic, United States

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Cancer Biology

Research focus
prostate cancer
androgens
steroid metabolism
hormonal therapy
androgen receptor

Experimental organism
human
Wesley Sundquist

University of Utah School of Medicine, United States

Expertise
Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
Microbiology and Infectious Disease
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology

Research focus
virus-host interactions
retroviruses
HIV

Experimental organism
human
Wilfred van der Donk

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology

Research focus
enzymology
chemical biology
natural product biosynthesis
cyclic peptides
antibiotics
bacteria
Oliver Weichenrieder

Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, Germany

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
Genetics and Genomics

Research focus
retrotransposition
regulatory mRNA
x-ray crystallography
structural biology
William I Weis

Stanford University, United States

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics

Research focus
cell adhesion
wnt signaling
x-ray crystallography
structural biology

Experimental organism
C. elegans
dictyostelium
human
mouse
Mingjie Zhang

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong SAR China

Expertise
Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics

Research focus
structural biology
neuronal development and signaling
cell polarity
scaffold proteins

Experimental organism
human
mouse