Plenary platform for peptide professionals

The Journal of Peptide Science is an official publication of the European Peptide Society and is produced "as a common platform for international, multidisciplinary scientific exchange" open to all nationalities and both members and nonmembers of the society. The composition of the editorial advisory board bears this out and is essentially a who's who of peptide science.

Keeping up to date with peptide-related advances has been an uphill battle. If this new journal can bring together the best from its diverse disciplines then it will be performing an immense service.

The first year has certainly lived up to these expectations and has covered a wide spectrum of research. This included a detailed study on the properties of the innovative PEGA resins by Morten Meldal et al. and several papers at the forefront of the combinatorial and solid phase technologies. This included papers by Arpda Furka et al., one of the founders of the combinatorial revolution, and by S?ren Mouritsen et al. in one of the clearest papers I have read in the area describing the solution and resin screening of D-amino acid peptide libraries.

This was complemented by a paper by Andrew Bray et al. who used a multi-pin approach as a "methodological tool" in the investigation of peptide couplings.

The area of peptide mimetics was well covered. Of particular note was the full paper by the group of Rolf Berg on the solid phase synthesis of peptide nucleic acids, describing the possible pitfalls and the optimal synthetic routes to this fascinating family of compounds. Also included was the first report of the preparation of an all aza-peptide analogue of a renin inhibitor. Full synthetic and characterisation details were given in all papers, for which the authors and editor are to be congratulated.

The Journal of Peptide Science is produced in an attractive format with good-quality text and is well laid out with a variety of figures. The issues reviewed contained detailed and highly readable papers at the forefront of current peptide and solid-phase methodologies. It was a pleasure to review, and I hope it can survive by continuing to publish excellent science.

Mark Bradley is a Royal Society research fellow, University of Southampton.