Guy Genin

Washington University in St. Louis

Editor, Cell Biophysics

Biophysical Journal

What are you currently working on that excites you?

What an exciting time this is for the whole field of mechanobiology! The basic principles of mechanotransduction, mechanoresponsiveness, and mechanical memory are coming together to the point where their clinical application is possible, with many groups and even start-ups now applying these basic principles to patient care. The field has long been able to perform stress analysis on tissues, but now many cell types can be included in these analyses, as well as the way they evolve themselves and their local microenvironments. Fibroblasts respond very differently to different types of stress fields, and my collaborators and I are working to harness these responses for improved healing after rotator cuff repair and dermal grafting. Details are hopefully coming soon—keep your eyes on the pages of Biophysical Journal!

How do you stay on top of all the latest developments in your field?

How times have changed! Does anyone else remember all the way back to the era of lounging with the paper edition of Biophysical Journal? Now, by the time that the paper versions come out—and even the tweets for that matter—the news is old. For the latest breakthroughs, I look through preprint servers, join working group meetings of the National Science Foundation’s Science and Technology Center for Engineering Mechanobiology (all are invited!), and take notes at the Biophysical Society Annual Meeting. Through all these changes to publishing, I find the perspective pieces in Biophysical Journal to be increasingly valuable. All the new facts I need are on preprint servers, and all the new disinformation I need is on Twitter, but for new perspectives, I turn to “New and Notable” articles and Reviews in Biophysical Journal to learn about emerging ideas.