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Genes to Cells
© 2013 The Molecular Biology Society of Japan/Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.
Edited By: Mitsuhiro Yanagida
Impact Factor: 2.68
ISI Journal Citation Reports © Ranking: 2011: 73/158 (Genetics & Heredity); 111/181 (Cell Biology)
Online ISSN: 1365-2443
Cover Gallery
Click on the cover thumbnail to download a full page PDF
| 2013 | ||
| Volume 18 | ||
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| Phages have greatly contributed to flourishing of molecular biology, and even today, they remain useful tools for scientists. In this illustration, a “hikeshi” (a firefighter in Edo) is carrying a “matoi” (a standard of his firefighter team as its symbol), which is likened to a phage. Meanwhile lanterns held by firefighters in the back look like bacteria. | Kites are flying in the early spring in a town with the backdrop of Mt.Fuji. Being steered into the wind and skillfully manipulated via string, the kites look like metaphase chromosomes aligned on the equator of the cell. | A piece inspired by a fusion of traditional Japanese beauty and life sciences. There are a Japanese cosmetic brush and a hand mirror on a black board. An embryo fantastically reflected in the mirror suddenly reminds you of something: the brush is a very micropipette, and the embryo must be a subject of an experiment with it. How cleavage of a fertilized egg occurs is drawn like a family crest on a vanity bag, as if it indicates whom these cosmetic tools belong to. In the embryo, a lacZ marker transgene was driven by a connexin43 (Cx43) promoter in neural crest cells. Courtesy of Osamu Chisaka. |
| Issue 1 - January 2013 | Issue 3 - March 2013 | |
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| This month’s feature is molecular chaperones which support correct protein folding. A child represents a protein (or a polypeptide) trying to fold correctly, while a woman represents a chaperone teaching calligraphy. Pieces of paper scattered on the floor are misfolded polypeptides. In reality, accumulation of misfolded polypeptides will cause various kinds of diseases. Chaperones are essential to life. | Speaking of Japanese seasonal tradition in May, you may think of carp streamers flying high over roofs of houses. People fly the carps, wishing for healthy growth of their children. This month, we have painted each scale of a carp streamer, mimicking a mechanism known as lateral inhibition. So, how would you grade the work? | |
| Issue 4 - April 2013 |
| 2012 | ||
| Volume 17 | ||
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| Set against the backdrop of Mt. Fuji, a skilled craftsman is fixing a broken wooden barrel by excising damaged bases and then introducing new ones. We liken this to the process of DNA repair thereby recovering hydrogen bonds between each pair of bases. | A fisherman on a cliff is pulling nets as if synchronizing circadian rhythms with the help of light shining down from the sky. | A woman with a hanagasa (a traditional hat decorated with ornamental flowers) is performing a Japanese classical dance. The ornaments on the hat actually are gap junctions, and some of them are opened and allowing small molecules to pass through. |
| Issue 1 - January 2012 | Issue 3 - March 2012 | |
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| Branched waterfalls are reminiscent of the cell lineage of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans from a zygote to a newly hatched larva. | Regulated cell adhesion and cellular motility underlies dynamic cell rearrangement, which is essential for morphogenesis of various organs. We expressed this process using a picture of a stone levee along a canal. | The Epigenetic landscape, which was firstly depicted by C. H. Waddington in 1950's, has often been used to illustrate cellular differentiation in the process of biological development. Presented on our cover is a timeless representation of the landscape where we see worshippers of Mt. Fuji are being reprogrammed on the slope. Some are climbing high to acquire pluripotency, while others are traversing the foot, and being directly reprogrammed. |
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| This cover depicts The Bridge in the NGS Rain where people are being exposed to torrents of genomic information, that is, fruits of next generation sequencing. The man standing in the middle of the bridge is pictured deep in thought, considering how to utilize this sequence data set of the ALDH2 gene. Another man, shown to the right with a sake bottle, is eager to know whether he is genetically predisposed with a high tolerance for alcohol or not. | Coloring the summer night sky of Japan, this firework has a theme of the half spindle of animal mitotic cells. A centrosome containing a pair of centrioles is located in the center, and astral microtubules extend to the up to the left, while polar microtubules extend to the opposite direction. Japanese technology currently produces cutting-edge fireworks, and it should not be difficult to produce such fireworks in reality. | The theme of this month is “translation”. The information in DNA is first transcribed into mRNA, which is further converted into a chain of amino acids. This conversion process is called translation and a stop codon marks the end of translation in each mRNA molecule. In the illustration, a fictitious translator on completion of his translation seals the letter with a Chinese character “stop” and amber (which is a nickname for UAG, one of the stop codons). The face of the seal depicts letters of “translation”. |
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| Cilia of eukaryotic cells undulate in a well-balanced motion and play a variety of roles essential to life. The cover art for this month’s issue presents movements of ciliated cells of respiratory epithelium in an analogy to Susuki glasses, a feature of autumn in Japan. The cilia beat in a given direction defined by the structure of roots. In the picture, waves to the right are generating a current. There is a goblet cell that secretes mucus being drawn at the slightly right of the center on the near side of the picture. The moon and geese are also arranged in the picture so as to evoke another feature of autumn in Japan. | The principle mechanism of skin pattern formation in vertebrates can be explained with a mathematical model proposed by Alan Turing (reaction-diffusion system, 1952). In this month's cover art, wild-type and mutant tigers are glaring to the right (at a dragon coming up in December issue). In the front of the wild-type tiger, a rock is illustrated with three peaks representing waves of activator and inhibitor that are observed in the reaction-diffusion system. Furthermore, two bamboos having four internodes represent transmembrane domains in a certain variant of connexin (a subunit of the gap junctions), which is a four-span transmembrande protein and one of the responsible genes for morphological mutation in a vertebrate. | The cover art of this month is the second part of the series from the November issue. It describes how cellular slime molds assemble into a dragon. The cellular slime molds normally are individual of an amoeba-like unicellular organism. However, when they starve, tens of thousands of cells aggregate in one place to form a cluster. The cluster hugs the ground like a slug, searches for the right place for making spores, and forms a fluting body (lower part of the ground). |
| Issue 10 - October 2012 | Issue 11 - November 2012 | |
| 2011 | |||
| Volume 16 | |||
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| Overlooking Mount Fuji in the distance through the arching wooden bridge, reflected on the water surface, forming complete circles to resemble a pair of spectacles or a 'double helix' | Two sets of segregated chromatids during telophase are depicted as cats cuddled up comfortably beside spindle poles. | A designed family emblem of cell division blends well with traditional Japanese patterns of auspicious omens motifs as pine and bamboo, on the artwork of tiered food boxes in silver lacquer | |
| Issue 1 - January 2011 | Issue 2 - February 2011 | Issue 3 - March 2011 | |
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| Grand Sumo showing a YOKOZUNA or grand champion and “hands” of supporters are pulling the horizontal rope of the kesho-mawashi. They want to tie the kesho-mawashi, but simultaneously, they are making a new horizontal rope from an older vertical rope, using Holliday junction-like structure. | A beautiful woman of the Heian period is pulled by a dog and peeks out from behind a bamboo blind, which is likened to experimental data of DNase I footprint. Data: Genes to Cells 15(5), pp537-552 (2010). | A scene from a Chinese-inspired vigorous dragon dance in a festival in Kyushu, Japan. The dragon is likened to a messenger RNA (mRNA), expressing transcription with DNA template. | |
| Issue 4 - April 2011 | Issue 5 - May 2011 | Issue 6 - June 2011 | |
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| Importance of bidirectional transportation between TOHOKU and surrounding districts. The “Kaido” expressed as a stone-pave street is designed to look like microtubules. Carts going left and pulled by bulls and messengers going right are expressions of motor proteins with cargos in eukaryote cells. | Being inspired by the similarity in the appearance, KOKESHIs are portrayed as metaphase chromosomes, which pair KOKESHIs. It deserves attention that each pair of KOKESHI is designed the same and tied with a thread at their necks (kinetochores) each other. | A huge and prestigious shrine that looks like Izumo-Taisha shrine at a glance. White zigzag paper streamers like a leucine zipper-type transcription factor are tucked in a giant sacred rope (dextrorotatory double-helix). The paper streamers probably bind to specific sequences of dsDNA expressed as a sacred rope. | |
| Issue 7 - July 2011 | Issue 8 - August 2011 | Issue 9 - September 2011 | |
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| Harvest time. Toreutics on a guard of a Japanese sword has a design of ears of rice and a butterfly landing on them. No, they actually are DNA winding around nucleosome. | The Thunder God is generating the action potential, which is not lightning, in a neural network. The illustration is paired with that of December Issue. | Since nerves of higher animals have myelin sheaths, an action potential is propagated rapidly (phenomenon called a saltatory conduction) like the swift wind. The wind god is likened to an action potential that conduct bounces to be propagated. | |
| Issue 10 - October 2011 | Issue 11 - November 2011 | Issue 12 - December 2011 | |
Official Journal of the Molecular Biology Society of Japan
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