Happy 50th anniversary FEBS
Oeiras, 28.07.2014
As part of its 50th anniversary celebrations, the Federation of European Biochemistry Societies (FEBS) invited its Constituent Societies to compile ‘FEBS 50th Anniversary Virtual Issues’. The “FEBS 50th Anniversary Virtual Issue: Portugal”, prepared by the Portuguese Biochemistry Society, features five articles affiliated to ITQB among the twelve chosen to represent Portuguese biochemistry.
Each FEBS 50th Anniversary Virtual Issue includes a selection of articles from two FEBS long-established journals - The FEBS Journal (formerly European Journal of Biochemistry) and FEBS Letters – listed chronologically as a ‘hybrid’ issue, as well as an introductory editorial from the issue’s compilers that explains the selection process (predominantly based on citation numbers) and highlights some of the work featured. The Portuguese issue selected twelve papers focusing “only on original contributions and, as far as possible, have avoided repetition of works coming from the same laboratory”. The selection was made from the 303 articles published in FEBS Letters and The FEBS Journal / European Journal of Biochemistry with at least one author having Portugal as an address up to 2013. As suggested by FEBS, the selection criterion was based on “the impact on the scientific community as indicated by the overall count of citations or, for more recent works, the number of citations per year”.
Appearing in this issue and affiliated to ITQB are five papers: two in the area of bioinorganic biochemistry (Santos, H. et al., 1984; Lemos, R.S. et al., 2001), one on the quantitative analysis of metabolic fluxes (Neves, A.R. et al., 2000), one in plant biochemistry (Melo, N.S. et al., 1997), and one in theoretical biochemistry also highlighted on the issue cover (Micaêlo, N.M. et al., 2007). Authoring two of the selected papers are Helena Santos, head of the Lab of Cell Physiology and NMR, and António Xavier, founder of ITQB and whose contribution to the field of bioinorganic biochemistry is also highlighted in the editorial of the Portuguese issue.
List of selected papers affiliated to ITQB:
Santos, H., Moura, J.J.G., Moura, I., LeGall, J. and Xavier, A.V. (1984) NMR studies of electron transfer mechanisms in a protein with interacting redox centres: Desulfovibrio gigas cytochrome c3. Eur. J. Biochem., 141: 283–296.
Melo, N.S., Nimtz, M., Conradt, H.S., Fevereiro, P.S. and Costa, J. (1997) Identification of the human Lewisa carbohydrate motif in a secretory peroxidase from a plant cell suspension culture (Vaccinium myrtillus L.) . FEBS Lett., 415: 186–191.
Neves, A.R., Ramos, A., Shearman, C., Gasson, M.J., Almeida, J.S. and Santos, H. (2000) Metabolic characterization of Lactococcus lactis deficient in lactate dehydrogenase using in vivo 13C-NMR. Eur. J. Biochem., 267: 3859–3868.
Lemos, R.S., Gomes, C.M., Santana, M., LeGall, J., Xavier, A.V. and Teixeira, M. (2001) The “strict” anaerobe Desulfovibrio gigas contains a membrane-bound oxygen-reducing respiratory chain . FEBS Lett., 496: 40–43.
Micaêlo, N.M. and Soares, C.M. (2007) Modeling hydration mechanisms of enzymes in nonpolar and polar organic solvents. FEBS J., 274: 2424–2436.
