Foreword

Greg Petsko, a renowned structural biochemist at Brandeis University, aside from his various additional or honorary academic roles, has another guise: he is Genome Biology’s columnist, regularly serving up a taste of life and the world of science, as he sees it, since the journal’s launch in 2000. Perhaps best compared to the style of Sydney Brenner’s long-running ‘Loose Ends and False Starts’ (later simplified to ‘Loose Ends’) column in Current Biology, Greg’s column is a monthly offering of topical science discussion, written in the wittiest, provocative and sometimes even perverse style. Not only does Greg challenge dogma and drive discussion among Genome Biology’s readers, but he also boasts an impressive fan base. Greg’s columns, as testament to how popular they are, are often found in our ‘most highly accessed’ listings and I should confess to being rather bemused, when first joining Genome Biology, to be told by attendees at a conference I was attending that the best thing Genome Biology had going was Greg’s column! This feedback has since been repeated many-a-time and some go further, proposing that Greg may like to discuss a certain issue. My role at Genome Biology becomes increasingly clear.

I share with my many colleagues who have worked with Greg over the years, a great fondness, not just for Greg, but also for his monthly perspective on whatever topic is in his sights. My personal favorites have to be the ones penned (or maybe pawed) by the guest writers Mink and Clifford (the lamb chops are in the post!); although the Bush/Cheney-focused columns during the aforementioned administration are a very close second.

I continue to be amazed by Greg’s dedication to the journal — few could go the distance of a monthly column; where the ideas come from, I don’t know - and I hope (as do his many followers, I’m sure) that he’ll continue to be a mainstay of life at Genome Biology, offering up, as only Greg can, a taste of how things should be, for some time to come.

Clare Garvey
Editor, Genome Biology
October 2010

P.S. Greg’s latest columns can be found here, on the Genome Biology website.