ChemBioChem 2003, 4, No. 1 ¹ 2003 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH&Co. KGaA, Weinheim 1439-4227/03/04/01 $ 20.00+.50/0 3

A Golden Future

™We wish to suggest a structure for the salt of deoxyribose nucleic acid (D.N.A.).This structure has novel features which are of considerable biological interest.∫[1]

With these words 50 years ago, James D. Watson and Francis H. C. Crickbegan their famous article in Nature proposing the double-helix structure ofDNA. The article appeared in April 1953, and the single figure in the paper wasa simple diagram of a structure that is now familiar to scientists, and manynonscientists, the world over. The structure allowed the postulation of acopying mechanism for genetic information and confirmed the role of DNA asan important biomacromolecule. The work of Watson and Crick, along withthat of Maurice H. F. Wilkins and Rosalind E. Franklin, was undeniably one of thehighlights in scientific research in the 20th century, and Watson, Crick, andWilkins shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1962 for theirdiscoveries.

With the 50th anniversary of that original article, 2003 is a good time forresearchers to reflect on the amazing progress that has been made in the fieldsof chemical biology and genetics, from that first basic structure to thepublication of the human genome in 2001.[2] Chemical biology has establisheditself as an important interdisciplinary area and the rapid growth of this field ofresearch looks likely to continue, with much inspiration and encouragementgained from the previous endeavors of scientists like Watson and Crick.

ChemBioChem is a European journal of chemical biology;it is co-owned by a group of European scientific societies andpublished by WILEY-VCH. Contributions in ChemBioChem cover chemical biology and biologicalchemistry, medicinal chemistry, bioinorganic and bioorganic chemistry, biochemistry, molecularand structural biology, that is, research of the overlapping areas between biology and chemistry.ChemBioChem publishes Short Communications and Full Papers as well as Reviews, Minireviews,Highlights, Concepts, Book Reviews, and Conference Reports.

������

Figure 1. A modern representation of the double helix ofDNA.

http://www.chembiochem.org

Full text:

http://www.interscience.wiley.com

4 ¹ 2003 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH&Co. KGaA, Weinheim 1439-4227/03/04/01 $ 20.00+.50/0 ChemBioChem 2003, 4, No. 1

Here at ChemBioChem, we hope to play our part by providing apremier source for critical and important information about allaspects of chemical biology. Co-owned and supported by 14 Euro-pean scientific societies but receiving articles from all around theworld (see Figure 2), ChemBioChem is an international chemicalbiology journal with a European heart. Our next issue will containcontributions from the USA, Japan, Germany, France, Denmark,Belgium, and Russia amongst other countries; due to the end-of-year break it will come to you as a double issue in early March.

Although the journal has some way to go before reaching its 50thanniversary, ChemBioChem has made great progress during its firstthree years. During 2002 we heard that ChemBioChem's first journalimpact factor is 2.920. This places the journal amongst other farmore established journals and is a great foundation on which tobuild. With this encouraging news, ChemBioChem continues to growin size and strength. The number of high-quality manuscriptssubmitted continues to increase, with many authors taking advant-age of the Online Submission of Manuscripts system that can befound on our homepage. This electronic system is easy to use,secure, and saves the author time and money. It has also had adramatic effect on our publication times, which on averagedecreased by two months during 2002. Faster publication wasaided by an increase of almost 40% in the number of journal pageslast year. We hope to speed up the publication process further andpublish even more pages of interesting research during 2003.

Issue 10 of last year was another exciting first for the journal. Thisspecial issue of ChemBioChem on G-protein-coupled receptors,published in association with Aventis, attracted a great deal ofinterest and praise, with a 66% increase in the total number ofChemBioChem articles downloaded from Wiley Interscience for thatmonth. In fact, more and more chemists and biologists are accessingthe online version of ChemBioChem–a list of the five most-downloaded articles is presented in Table 1. For convenient e-mailedinformation about the most recent publications, anyone (not justsubscribers) can register for the "Content Alert" and "ProfiledContent Alert" services on Wiley Interscience.

The ChemBioChem team would like to thank our authors, reviewers,readers, and the members of our Editorial Advisory Board for theirsupport over the last year. We wish you all a successful 2003 and lookforward to the next 50 golden years of chemical biology.

[1] J. D. Watson, F. H. C. Crick, Nature 1953, 171, 737±738.[2] J. C. Venter et al. , Science 2001, 291, 1304±1350.

Figure 2. Made in Europe for the world. Top: The 14 European Societiesthat co-own and support ChemBioChem. Bottom: Breakdown ofmanuscript origin in 2002.

Table 1. The most downloaded ChemBioChem articles.

Title Correspondenceauthor

Year, issue

Molecular Mechanisms of Death-Receptor-Mediated Apoptosis

P. H. Krammer 2001, 1

RNA Interference and SmallInterfering RNAs

T. Tuschl 2001, 4

Beyond Watson and Crick:DNA Methylation and MolecularEnzymology of DNA Methyl-transferases

A. Jeltsch 2002, 4

Protein Targeting (Nobel Lec-ture)

G. Blobel 2000, 2

Combinatorial Strategies forTargeting Protein Families :Application to the Proteases

J. A. Ellman 2002, 1

Dr. Kathryn Wright