Scientific discoveries in a single field can call for a re-appreciation of specific observations, which can be communicated in the form of a review. This year, FEBS Open Bio launched a new type of special issue termed “In the Limelight”, which contain review articles focused on a topic of special interest.

The first of these puts the limelight on ‘Bioplastics’ and was commissioned to accompany the FEBS Special Session on Science & Society – Plastics: revolution, pollution and substitution at the 45^th FEBS Congress. This issue consists of the following articles:

·      Anthropocene, the plastic age and future perspectives

Raffaele Porta

·      From plastics to microplastics and organisms

Oliver Bajt

·      The role of biotechnology in the transition from plastics to bioplastics: an opportunity to reconnect global growth with sustainability

Micaela Degli Esposti, Davide Morselli, Fabio Fava, Lorenzo Bertin, Fabrizio Cavani, Davide Viaggi, Paola Fabbri

·      Active biopackaging produced from by-products and waste from food and marine industries

 Frédéric Debeaufort

The second “In the Limelight” issue focuses on membraneless organelles, highlighting condensate assembly mechanisms and the involvement of prion proteins and cytochrome c in these phase-separated ‘compartments’.

·      Membraneless organelles: a smart design for metabolic control

Irene Díaz-Moreno, Miguel A. De la Rosa

·      Do polyproline II helix associations modulate biomolecular condensates?

Miguel Mompeán, Javier Oroz, Douglas V. Laurents

·      Prion-like proteins: from computational approaches to proteome-wide analysis

Marcos Gil-Garcia, Valentín Iglesias, Irantzu Pallarès, Salvador Ventura

·      Mitochondrial cytochrome c shot towards histone chaperone condensates in the nucleus

Katiuska González-Arzola, Alejandra Guerra-Castellano, Francisco Rivero-Rodríguez, Miguel Á. Casado-Combreras, Gonzalo Pérez-Mejías, Antonio Díaz-Quintana, Irene Díaz-Moreno, Miguel A. De la Rosa

FEBS Open Bio is interested in outreach activities and promoting early career researchers. ‘Insights’, a new article type that was launched this year, summarises the main findings from articles published in the journal and presents them within a wider context to a lay audience. Moreover, two of the four published Insight articles so far have been written by postdocs interested in science communication. We invite any researchers interested in contributing to this series to contact the editorial office.

• Advancing early gastric cancer detection

Sarah Gillen

• The precise magic of CRISPR

Alexander Kondrashov 

• Resilience to social stress: is it in the blood?

Ruzhica Bogeska

• Insights: fear of GAD

Duncan Wright 

From the time FEBS Open Bio published its first volume until now, there has been a steady increase in submitted manuscripts. To accommodate a rigorous assessment of incoming scientific work and ensure researchers with relevant expertise are available to handle manuscripts on diverse subjects, the editorial board has been progressively expanding. In addition, we recruited more volunteer reviewers working in diverse research areas to help facilitate peer review. Beyond expanding the editorial board, the editorial office staff also grew in order to maintain rapid decision and manuscript turnaround times, as well as allow the journal to direct new initiatives aimed at supporting the research community.

We were delighted that FEBS Open Bio closed its first decade with such an exciting year, and invite you all to join as we look toward new developments in both the upcoming year and the upcoming decade!