Nuts and Bolts
I am pleased to introduce a new piece of the ICCNS website that is designed to help promote research and collaborations in a very practical way.
The CCN field has grown substantially since the first International Workshop in 2001. For example, a PubMed search for CCN proteins in the 12 months preceding the workshop yields fewer than 20 research articles; the same search done for the last 12 months produces nearly 50 research papers.
To help us continue to grow and attract new investigators to the field, a way to exchange reagents and techniques of mutual interest will be vital.
To facilitate interactions between CCN investigators, the Nuts and Bolts section will consist of two parts.
The first component is the CCN Reagent Registry.
We invite every principal investigator who has a particular antibody, expression plasmid, cDNA construct, cell line, or other useful reagent they are willing to share to list that reagent on our registry. We want to keep this simple, so you only need to send me the reagent name, your name and institution, your preferred contact info, and a brief citation of any publications that provide information about the reagent. Feel free to include any additional comments you want to have posted along with required information. Interested investigators should contact the person who has the reagent for additional details.
Please note that by listing a reagent you are not obligating yourself to provide it for free or without restrictions.
The Scientific Committee appreciates that each reagent is different, and respects the right of the owner to work out details about how the reagent will be used, whether it is provided as part of a collaborative effort or not, etc.
We hope that by making reagents available to the wider CCN community we can promote progress and collaborations that would not be possible otherwise.
The second piece of the Nuts and Bolts section will be Technical Issues.
This will be a place where investigators can post technical or methodological questions, and where others can provide answers.
For example, if you want to do a motility assay and are not familiar with how to do them, you can send me a question like “What are the commonly used assays for motility and how do you decide which one to use?”
I’ll post the question and anyone who wishes to provide help can send me their info for posting on the website. We appreciate that it is a time-consuming service to provide such information, and we will do our best to see that all technical comments or discussions on a technical point find their way into the JCCS.
In a third section, called Nuggets, we will welcome methods-oriented manuscripts, that address technical aspects of general interest.
A fourth section, called Lighting bolts will be devoted to the publication of brief communications of new data (with 3 figures maximum, no longer than 5 single-spaced pages including the figures.
Finally, we welcome your input to help make the Nuts and Bolts section an easy-to-use and helpful webpage.
Your suggestions are most welcome!
John Castellot, PhD