Plant Cell, Vol. 11, 1813-1814, October 1999, Copyright © 1999, American Society of Plant Physiologists
Genomics Articles: New Inroads
In my July 1998 editorial, I outlined how THE PLANT CELL would be covering and tracking progress in the field of genomics. I am pleased to be able to say that the journal has been extending the range of research articles that it publishes to include a wide spectrum of papers that encompass genomics techniques. Submission of such papers is enthusiastically welcomed, so long as they clearly address a biological problem and provide a novel and significant finding(s) that will extend our understanding of how plants function. Moreover, the journal intends to use the new front section feature, Insights, to provide perspectives on newly published reports of findings that identify emerging areas, themes, and/or models in genomics as well as in all other areas of plant biology.
With this issue, THE PLANT CELL debuts a new format that will be used to further enhance the focus on genomics throughout the next year. The journal intends to highlight special articles that have been written to acquaint the plant science community with genomics technologies and approaches and to provide up-to-the-minute information on a broad spectrum of tools and resources that are already or soon will be available to the public. These articles—to varying degrees part review and part research paper—will be broadly grouped into sections such as Functional Genomics, Comparative Genomics, Structural Genomics, and Bioinformatics. Rather than waiting until the end of next year to publish these articles in one special issue, they will appear periodically in our regular monthly issues over the next year or so. By publishing these articles in a "rolling" special issue, the journal intends to capture the technologies and approaches of genomics as they emerge and to avoid delaying the publication of research articles.
In this issue and in the December 1999 issue, the journal will turn the spotlight on to Functional Genomics, with articles on Comparative Genomics to follow early next year. Like special issue articles, articles of this type will be submitted upon invitation by the journal's editorial board. Nevertheless, within the framework that the journal has established for these articles there is a great degree of flexibility, and I would welcome your suggestions as to the genomics topics that we should consider covering. And for those of you who have found the previous five special issues of THE PLANT CELL to be valuable reference and/or teaching tools, do not be concerned! It is the journal's intention to compile, section by section, the best of these genomics articles into a bound volume that will be available for distribution by the end of 2000.
Ralph S. Quatrano
Department of Biology Campus Box 1137 Washington University St. Louis, Missouri 63130-4899 rsq{at}wustl.edu
