PRX Life’s Chief Editor on What’s Next for the Journal That Unites Physics With Biology

Living systems obey the same laws of physics as any other matter. As quantitative and computational capabilities grow, scientists across disciplines are developing new tools to investigate how these systems behave, from individual molecules to large ecosystems.

Since its launch last year, the APS journal PRX Life has published cutting-edge research at the intersection of physics and biology. APS News spoke with its chief editor, Serena Bradde, about PRX Life’s first year and what’s next.

You’ve been a statistical physicist for more than a decade. What’s interesting to you about that field, and how did it draw you into biology?

As a student in Italy, I learned statistical physics, a subfield that studies in great detail how systems made up of many microscopic elements behave at a macroscopic scale — like how billions of molecules in a room can be described as a gas at a given temperature and pressure. This is what I like about physics generally: being able to connect microscopic processes to macroscopic phenomena.

As a researcher, I realized I could apply the same methods to understand biological systems. In an early project, my colleagues and I developed a statistical physics formalism to explore how populations of antibiotic-resistant and antibiotic-sensitive gut bacteria change in response to antibiotics. Since then, I’ve been fascinated by how bacteria and other living systems sense and adapt to changing environments.

What makes multidisciplinary fields like biological physics and quantitative biology so important? What kinds of phenomena have PRX Life authors investigated?

Tools from physics can describe biological behavior quantitatively, but biological systems can also teach us new physics. And if we learn how living systems work and predict their behavior, it could fuel new discoveries in fields from molecular and cell biology to neuroscience, epidemiology, and ecology.

PRX Life publishes research that intersects with all of these disciplines. In one of our more recent articles, scientists identified a mechanism by which drug-resistant cancer cells interacting with their normal cells may persist longer than expected, leading to treatment failure. This new finding will allow us to be able to predict pre-existing drug resistance in cancer patients before treatment.

Another PRX Life study addressed long-standing questions about chromosome replications in bacteria — results that not only advance our understanding of how bacteria divide and grow, but can have practical implications for designing synthetic cells.

How was the inaugural year of PRX Life?

I’m really proud of all the work our team did to launch the journal in July 2023. With the help of our editorial board, we interviewed and surveyed a variety of research communities to inform our strong, multidisciplinary scope. I’m also excited by the high interest we received from the community, which allowed us to publish a few months after opening for submissions.

Some of our studies have been well-covered in the news too, like the study on swimmers in viscous fluid, namely, single-celled algae and human sperm, that “break the law” — Newton’s third law of motion — with the help of their elastic flagella.

What’s next for the journal?

We’re always looking for new ways to connect with broader research communities. In a future Editorial, we’ll share guidance to help authors navigate the journal’s review process more smoothly, especially early career scientists. Also, in addition to being fully open access — meaning the journal’s content will always be freely available to read — author publication charges are being waived, so authors can publish in PRX Life for free through 2024.

Along with the latest research, we’ll be publishing special content to showcase the fast-evolving, multidisciplinary research landscape at the interface of physics and biology. We’re launching mini-reviews, reviews, and tutorials to equip new and existing readers, from college students to experts across disciplines, with background and insight into the complexities of this dynamic field.

My team and I will continue our outreach at conferences around the world to spread the word about the journal. Part of that effort includes a PRX Life invited session at the American Physical Society’s joint March Meeting and April Meeting — now the APS Global Physics Summit. This session of invited talks will give some of our authors the opportunity to participate in an annual forum highlighting the latest research in front of an audience of international experts in biological physics — so stay tuned!