Top 5• The year in Biology•医学年份•BMC in the news•BMC在博客圈中•社区中的BMC

这周，我们将为您提供过去12个月BMC系列中发生的事情的摘要。今天，一切都与生物学有关。

生物学一年

TheBMC-series was very proud to get involved with some of the biggest stories in biology over the past year, including an article published inBMC遗传学that formed part of the publication ofENCODE，DNA元素的百科全书 - 一个全面注释人类基因组功能元素的项目。该文章概述了一种新的方法来识别基因组序列和功能的个体间变化，并与其他研究整合了Genome Biologyin our文章集合。

几个月后BMC Genomics，继续基因组主题，发表了13篇文章的出版，这些文章构成了伴侣系列的出版物Pig Genome。前往我们的博客更多的德泰ls在该集合中，其中包括对猪作为生物医学模型的综述，以及家养猪的第一个详细基因表达图集。

Over in Stockholm, the Nobel committee were handing out their annual awards, which this year celebrated advances in stem cell biology. We were delighted that the two recipients of this year’s prize in Physiology or Medicine had both chosen to publish some of their work in BioMed Central journals – including two articles from Shinya Yamanaka inBMC Developmental Biology。Find out more about why we think publishing this work openly was so important:Nobel prizes, openness, and the cellular circle of life。

随着国际动物学命名委员会（ICZN）加入21，生物学的其他革命也发生在动物分类法领域。^st通过最终认识到新动物名称的仅电子出版物的世纪。An interview with Dr Frank-Thorsten Krell- ICZN的委员和ICZN Zoobank委员会主席 - 讨论了《新守则》对作者和编辑的含义，该守则已发表在BMC Evolutionary Biology。

Just what could some of these new species look like you may ask? Well, an ecologist might just have snapped a photo of one of them and submitted it to theBMC生态学Image Competition。You’ve only a few weeks left to find out whether they did or not, when the winners are finally announced….

两个都BMC生态学和BMC Evolutionary Biologywere also at the heart of an update to our peer-review policies over on the biology side of theBMC-series, following the announcement that we will now be considering manuscripts that have previously been reviewed in the community review initiative, Peerage of Science. Our blog postSupporting a new way to peer-review, gives you all the details you need to discover just what this involves, and why we’re now a part of it.

This initiative followed an announcement earlier in the year that theBMC-series biology journals also now join their data-focused sister journalsBMC研究笔记和Qugasciencein implementing a new section in published articles鼓励支持数据。

Other research highlights from across the biology series this year include a brace of articles inBMC Veterinary Researchon thepsychology of equine performance and the biology behind laminitis,a Review presenting evidence of alink between stress and the development of visceral obesityinBMC Physiology， 和BMC结构生物学getting some SAXS appealwith a Commentary and Review on the use of techniques in Small-Angle Scattering to determine the structure of proteins.

我们还询问了一些编辑委员会成员，他们认为他们是2012年的亮点。AlbertoDiapro教授对一项新的研究印象深刻，该研究重新审视了有关该数据的数据。mechanical properties of chromatin:

“It is a paper considering more than 10 years of works on chromatin that keeps the discussion at a very high level pushing for new data and for further discussions. Understanding the mechanical properties of chromatin is a hard biophysical task within the context of understanding factors influencing gene regulation. This is a very important topic that hopefully will be treated again inBMC生物物理学”。

And Professor Guido Barbujani, Section Editor forBMC遗传学felt that a genetic studycomparing contemporary populations of koalaswith those sourced from museum specimens represented

“A simple article, very careful in the validation and analysis of data, effective in conveying a clear message with implications for conservation policies.”

同时希拉·麦考密克教授BMC植物生物学felt that a Commentary on why plant roots displayunexpected growth patterns in zero gravity很重要，因为

“这一发现是完全出乎意料的，因此需要更多的研究来找出为什么根源偏向太空。”

Next up:医学年份