PRX Life’s new chief editor on making the journal as diverse as the field it serves

A single bacterium teems with mysterious physical processes. Scale up to an entire colony or multi-cellular life, and the opportunities for investigation multiply as fast as the microbes themselves.

"The beauty of biological physics lies in this richness and diversity," says Ariel Amir, PRX Life’s incoming chief editor. "The repertoire of questions is so immense."

At the Weizmann Institute of Science, Amir runs a complex systems group and directs the Clore Center for Biological Physics, uniting scientists across biology, chemistry, physics, and math.

"That work is in the spirit of PRX Life," Amir says. "It doesn't matter if you're a quantitative biologist, a physicist, or an engineer by training, as long as what's driving you is the passion to understand the biological system."

APS News sat down with Amir to discuss his path into biophysics, his vision for the journal, and the importance of balancing theory with experiment at the edge of the field.

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

What attracted you to the physical sciences?

When I was 16, I got into the Israeli Physics Olympiad camp, which is a pretty intense two-week experience. I was shocked by the difficulty of the problems. For example, we had to calculate the speed of a tsunami given the depth of the ocean and nothing else. I couldn't quite solve it, but I guessed the solution correctly based on dimensional analysis.

The beauty of the questions led me to pivot from mathematics to physics. I became excited about trying to explain natural phenomena, appliances, or devices — real-world things. I had amazing teachers and peers at that camp, some of whom I'm in touch with to this day.

When did you start applying physics to biological questions?

It was serendipitous. When I moved to Harvard University as a junior fellow, one of my mentors proposed a project in biophysics that got me hooked immediately. It was related to cell wall growth and how bacteria regulate their shapes.

Fifteen years later, we still don't have a full answer to that question, but it’s a nice example of a highly interdisciplinary problem involving mechanics, electrophysiology, molecular biology, geometry, and more. It’s also a good example of how a great mentor can make a huge impact on your career.

What do you study now at the Weizmann Institute of Science?

For several years, our research has focused on single cell-level behavior, primarily in bacteria. We ask how bacteria control their shapes and sizes, and how they couple gene regulation and protein production with other processes like DNA replication and division. We are trying to create holistic models that fit these different aspects into one framework.

One ongoing, fun project involved neutrophil swarming. Say you have a wound or an infection; your neutrophils, a type of white blood cell, need to accumulate at the injury site very quickly. The idea we had was that the cells closest to the infection site secrete a swarming cue molecule, and the neighboring cells sense that and start secreting it too. Imagine something like “the wave” at a sports stadium. We've been collaborating with experimentalists on this question for about a decade, and now we know this is indeed how it works.

It sounds like fundamentals and applications are both important to you.

I'm very passionate about collaborating with experimentalists. My best collaborations were ones where sometimes the data leads the way and other times it’s the theory.

What drives my own lab is the basic science and curiosity-driven research. It's great if our work leads to some application down the road, but if we manage to explain a natural phenomenon or puzzle, I'm happy.

When I think about PRX Life submissions, I think we need to make sure we represent three situations: studies that ask important biological questions but use conventional physics to answer them, studies inspired by biology that lead to innovative physics, and studies that do both.

Tell us more about your vision for PRX Life.

In many ways, the journal is already fulfilling this role, but I envision PRX Life to be a home for biological physics and the go-to journal for excellent interdisciplinary work in this field. I want it to be accessible for quantitative biologists, too, not just physicists.

There is an idea in evolution inspired by the scene in “Alice in Wonderland” where one has to keep running, or evolving, just to stay in place. It is called the Red Queen hypothesis. I feel like a lot of work, attention to detail, and labor of love is needed to maintain the high bar for PRX Life. As chief editor, I hope I can take advantage of having seen science done for more than a decade on each side of the Atlantic. There are differences, pros and cons, to each style of research and scientific culture, and I hope I can put these perspectives to use at PRX Life.

Are there any trends in the field you’re keeping an eye on?

Problems in biology often focus on particular systems or subsystems, and glorious careers were founded on specific processes in specific model organisms. But making connections across organisms or between different systems within an organism opens many exciting questions. It would be exciting to see this type of research in PRX Life.

If you could sit down in person with every prospective author for PRX Life, what would you say to them?

One of my research groups just submitted a paper to PRX Life a month ago. We submitted to PRX Life because the papers I've been seeing there recently deal with fundamental, interesting, exciting problems in biology, but the tools needed to answer them are physical, and not in the conventional biology toolbox.

I would say to potential authors, if your work resonates with this line of thinking, then PRX Life could be an excellent home for your research.

What do you get up to when you’re not working?

Most of my hobbies are outdoors. I've been an avid hiker for as long as I can remember, and I've been rock-climbing and running for 20 years. I try to pass on this love of nature to my kids; we just got back from hiking in the Alps.

Since moving to Weizmann, I picked up mountain biking with a group of professors who've been riding together for more than 15 years. It's been nice to pick up a new hobby and feel the excitement of a learning curve.