The Journal of Physical Chemistry B (JPC B) will publish a Virtual Special Issue (VSI) on “Biomolecular Electrostatic Phenomena.” The VSI is led by Guest Editors Wei Yang (Florida State University) and Walter Rocchia (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia). Together they encourage researchers to submit their new and unpublished work by June 30th, 2022. Research areas of particular interest […]
The Journal of Physical Chemistry B (JPC B) will publish a Virtual Special Issue (VSI) on “Biomolecular Electrostatic Phenomena.” The VSI is led by Guest Editors Wei Yang (Florida State University) and Walter Rocchia (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia). Together they encourage researchers to submit their new and unpublished work by June 30th, 2022.
Research areas of particular interest include:
- Processes where electrostatics plays an important role in either Life or Material sciences.
- Improvement of potential energy model for a better reproduction of subtle electrostatic effects.
- Electrostatic treatment on mesoscale systems.
- Experimental and theoretical methods to quantify electrostatic properties, such as titratable residue pKa and overall protein charge etc.
- Methods for accelerating electrostatic calculation in either continuum models or particle-particle interacting systems.
- Exploitation of electrostatic properties to realize new sensors or smart molecular machineries.
In conceiving this VSI, the Guest Editors were inspired by some recent exciting innovations and discoveries, including:
Electrostatic interactions are key in many processes inherent to biophysics and materials science. In the field of protein biochemistry, modulation of the charges on the amino acids, has important effects such as protein denaturation and triggering of signal transduction networks.
Typically, electrostatic potentials around biomolecules are computed from three-dimensional structures. Importantly, a new spectroscopic method was recently devised to experimentally determine electrostatic potentials near the molecular surfaces without using any structural information. Such experimental determination of electrostatic properties allows for direct examination of theoretical models and is a remarkable advance, with potential broad impacts on basic research and pharmaceutical development.
The past decade has also seen the development of various novel computational method developments or improvements to achieve better quantification of biomolecular processes in which electrostatic effects play a critical role.
Submission Instructions
The review process for all submissions for this VSI will be handled by JPC Executive Editor Pavel Jungwirth.
To ensure an unbiased peer-review process, the journal asks that you do not indicate within your manuscript that the submission is intended for the VSI. If you do, your manuscript will be returned for correction. Instead, when you submit your manuscript, please indicate this on your cover letter and note what part and section you feel will be the best fit. You can find a complete list of sections and other important information for authors in the JPC Author Guidelines.
As with all submissions to JPC, your manuscript should represent a rigorous scientific report of original research, as it will be peer-reviewed as a regular article. Manuscripts are expected to provide new physical insight and/or present new theoretical or computational methods of broad interest.
Contribute to this Virtual Special Issue
If you are unsure if your research is within the VSI’s scope or have other questions about submitting a manuscript to this VSI, please email JPC B Deputy Editor Marty Zanni’s office at zanni-office@jpc.acs.org .