Respiration Section Fall Newsletter

The role that neutrophils play in regulating inflammatory cell influx and immunopathology

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an important Gram-negative pathogen for both hospital-acquired infections and patients with lung diseases like Cystic Fibrosis.  One thing to note about P. aeruginosa is that this bacterial infection often causes a significant influx of neutrophils.  Certainly these innate immune cells play an important role in helping to ingest and kill the pathogen, but it is also appreciated that neutrophils can promote tissue damage, and may contribute to the pathogenesis of some autoimmune diseases.  Exactly how neutrophils promote the “immunopathology” that can occur following some infections is not clear.  A new article in AJP Lung this month provides compelling new evidence for the importance of neutrophils in producing the cytokine, interleukin (IL)-1β and the mechanism for how they are activated.  IL-1β production is critical for initiating inflammatory cell recruitment and activation, but prolonged IL-1β production can lead to immunopathology.  What is most intriguing about this paper is the observation that the molecular signaling mechanisms that lead to IL-1β production in macrophages vs. neutrophils are completely different despite the fact that these are both innate immune cell types responsible for initial engagement with bacterial pathogens.  Macrophages generally secrete IL-1β following activation of the inflammasome containing NLRC4, ASC and caspase-1.   Given this, one would have predicted that mice deficient in ASC, one of the NLRC4 inflammasome components, would be prevented from IL-1β secretion in response to P. aeruginosa infection. However, Patankar et al. in this issue (American Journal of Physiology - Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology, 2015; 309:L902) demonstrated that ASC-deficient mice still produce abundant IL-1β in response to infection.  Interestingly, these authors demonstrate that neutrophils are able to produce IL-1β independently of ASC, but still dependent on caspase 1.  These interesting results shed new light on the role that neutrophils play in regulating inflammatory cell influx and immunopathology, but as all good science does, these results also raise new questions.  Exactly how caspase 1 regulates IL-1β cleavage and activation in the absence of the cannonical NLRC4-ASC-containing inflammasome will be the subject of future investigations.

Associate Editor AJP-Lung, Beth Moore

APSselect October 2015 selection

AJP-Lung would like to recognize Dr. Brian Graham and his colleagues. Their article "Severe pulmonary hypertension is associated with altered right ventricle metabolic substrate uptake

" was chosen for APSselect October 2015.  You can access their paper, here.

Data Presentation

The editors at AJP Lung have been thinking a lot about data presentation.  Many scientists present their results by showing bar graphs that plot the mean plus or minus the standard error of the mean (mean ± SEM).  The advantage of this approach is that bar graphs are neat and easy to read, but it is also appreciated that this method of presenting data can mask some important attributes and potentially may be misinterpreted.  Recently, there was a very nice article by Harvey Motulsky, from Graphpad software, the maker of a commonly used data analysis program that highlights some important misconceptions about data analysis.  The article is available as open access (Pharmacol Res Perspect. 2015 Feb;3(1):e00093) and the link is provided here: Motulsky article .  It is especially interesting to consider figure 5 of the paper, which shows the same data set graphed 6 ways.  Looking at this figure, it can be appreciated that plotting mean ± SEM gives little insight into the variability in the data set.  It also may mask different sample sizes in some cases.  Some journals have editorial policies to insist that data be presented as scatter plots.  While AJP Lung has not decided on such an editorial policy at this time, we do want to encourage authors to think about how they present their data and to do so in the most transparent manner possible.  In the meantime, Happy Fall!

Letter to the friends of AJP-Lung

Dear friends and colleagues,

I hope this email finds you all well and good spirits.  I am writing to update you on a number of journal related issues

 1.    We have two Deputy Editors and eight Associate Editors with wide expertise in all areas of lung physiology, pathobiology and cell and molecular biology. In addition, two or our AEs (Lester Kobzik and Irina Petrache) and one of the Deputy Editors (Prakash YS) are practicing physicians (in addition to being outstanding scientists) and have broad expertise and appreciation of clinical studies. Remember, that our policy is that all papers will be reviewed.  Our editorial board consists of the cream of the crop and their reviews are highly informative and timely and always help to improve the quality of each paper.  The Associate Editors always provide succinct summaries of what needs to be done to move the paper forward.  

2.    AJP-Lung submissions are 38% higher this year compared to last year.  Our time for first decision for research manuscripts has decreased from 31 to 22 days.  Furthermore, we spare no effort to process revised manuscripts as soon as possible.   I would like to thank you for submitting your outstanding manuscripts to AJP-Lung. 

3.  Our impact factor has increased two years in a row and now stands at 4.08 (http://www.the-aps.org/mm/publications/journals/impact-factors.html).   I am very proud to tell you that we the highest ranked journal publishing mainly basic science and translational research articles on all aspects of pulmonary biology.  In the last year we have received a number of outstanding submissions of clinical articles as well.

 3.   We have revamped our Editorial Board.  I suggested to a number of members who had been in the board for a while to step down to make room for the younger generation.  This suggestion was very well received by most and some even mentioned that “they wished that other journals followed suit.” Please see http://ajplung.physiology.org/edboard for an updated list of editorial board members.  Additional nominations and self-nominations are welcome.  Please remember that each editorial board member must review at least 12 manuscripts per year (along with any revisions of a manuscript) and publish at least one manuscript per year in AJP-Lung.

4.       We now have a standard policy on appeals : http://ajplung.blogspot.com/2015/09/ajp-lung-policy-on-appeals_17.html. We stress that for an appeal to be successful, the authors must point out factual errors in the review process.  Differences of opinion are not grounds for an appeal.  If the authors have additional data that were not available to the reviewers, they will be invited to submit a new manuscript and highlight the additional information in their letter to the Editor.  The new manuscript will then be assigned to new reviewers for evaluation.  There is no guarantee that it will be accepted.

5.     We have eight active Calls for Papers (http://ajplung.physiology.org/). We make every effort to expedite  the processing of manuscripts submitted in response to Calls for Papers and highlight the best ones by Editorials and Perspectives.  Furthermore each paper is published under a heading listing the appropriate Call for Papers.  We welcome ideas for new calls and volunteers to act as guest Associate Editors.

6.  New feature (suggested and beta tested by Rory Morty): During the last three years I abandoned the “Editorial Focus” articles for a number of reasons: First, they were very seldom cited; Second, since they referred to a recently published article they did not help our impact factor; third, it was very difficult to find authors.  However, Rory came up with the brilliant idea of crossing the “Editorial Focus” with a Perspective.  The editorial/perspective still refers to a recently published article; however it also refers to 8-12 papers published in AJP-Lung during the last two years.   They will be formatted like a regular article (including an abstract) and contain either a table or a figure.  The first article (written by Rory of course) should appear in articles in press shortly.  Please let me know  if you are interested in writing a perspective on a paper that has either been published in the last six months or it is currently listed under papers in press

 8.    Perspectives and reviews:  We have had some brilliant reviews (Steven C. Pugliese February 1, 2015 : L229-L252;Harrod, February 15, 2015 : L307-L313; Yuan March 1, 2015 : L403-L415; Lykkedegn April 1, 2015 : L587-L602; Tomankova April 1, 2015 : L603-L618; Brune April 15, 2015 : L731-L745; Albertine May 15, 2015 : L983-L1001; Meyer June 15, 2015 : L1189-L1201), two Physiology in Medicine articles (Potoka et al.  February 15, 2015 : L314-L324; Mulugeta et al. September 15, 2015 : L507-L525).  A number of other reviews and perspective are listed  in “articles in press”; several more are in review. I am currently pleading with a number of authors to complete their promised submissions so they can be reviewed and hopefully accepted by October 15th (so they can appear in final form by December 15th).

9.    Awards:  AJP-Lung will be sponsoring an award for best paper by junior investigator published 2015.  Prakash and I are sponsoring a number of additional awards with private funds. These award announcements can be found at http://www.the-aps.org/mm/awards/sections/Resp#new as well as in our Facebook page  https://www.facebook.com/AJPLung/timeline/.  Please nominate our younger colleagues who benefit tremendously from the recognition.  Self-nominations are welcome as well.

l10.  As you know we have both a Facebook page and a blog.  We need help with finding and posting items of interest to our readers.  Please consider sending short communications to Amy (amcever@emory.edu) for posting.  They may include commentaries on articles in press or on articles in other journal.
 
Additional comments and suggestions are welcome and appreciated.  On behalf of AJP-Lung I would like to thank each one of your for your time and effort in reviewing manuscripts.  PLEASE CONSIDER SUBMITTING YOUR BEST ARTICLES TO AJP-LUNG.  OUR REVIEWS WILL INCREASE THE IMPACT AND QUALITY OF THESE ARTICLES.  FURTHERMORE I AM CONFIDENT THAT OUR IMPACT FACTOR WILL CONTINUE TO INCREASE

 With best regards

Sadis



Sadis Matalon, Ph.D., Dr.Sc. (Hon.) | Distinguished Professor,
Alice McNeal Endowed Chair | Vice Chair and Director,
Division of Molecular and Translational Biomedicine
Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine
Director, Pulmonary Injury and Repair Center
UAB | The University of Alabama at Birmingham
BMRII 224 | 901 19th St. S. | Birmingham, AL 35294
P: 205.934.4231 | smatalon@uabmc.edu

Editor-in-Chief | American Journal of Physiology –
Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology
http://ajplung.physiology.org/

AJP-Lung Policy on Appeals

Appealing a manuscript decision:

If an author contacts an Associate editor regarding an appeal to an editorial decision forward the appeal directly to the Editor in Chief (smatalon@uabmc.edu).

The Editor in Chief will then contact the appealing author and ask for them to point out factual errors in the review process (the Associate editor will be copied on all emails).

Upon receiving the author’s response, the Editor in Chief and the Associate editor will have a conference to determine one of three outcomes:

-       Overturn the decision and ask the author to send back a revised manuscript

-       Uphold the rejection

-       Uphold the rejection but encourage the author to send in a de novo manuscript

The  Editor in Chief will contact the author with the decision.

Call for nominations: The Usha Awards

The Usha (which means dawn in Sankrit) Awards 

Dr. Prakash YS, Deputy Editor of the American Journal of Physiology-Lung Cellular and Molecular Physiology, is soliciting nominations for the Usha awards. The nominee must be a promising trainee (undergraduate or graduate student, or a research fellow (<5 years since being granted the terminal degree (e.g. PhD, MD, DO, DVM), and should have contributed a 1st author abstract to the Respiration Section of the APS for presentation at the APS. Criteria for selection will include the level of excitement regarding the nominee's future, contribution by the nominee to the work, and the importance of the work to the field. Nominees are to be selected by the Respiration Section of the APS. All applications must be submitted by November 12, 2015. The TWO winners will receive $500 and a certificate of appreciation at the EB 2016 meeting.

apply here:
https://apps.the-aps.org/awardapps/login/index.cfm