As part of an effort to increase its international visibility and membership, boost submissions and subscriptions to its journals as well as encourage the exchange of different perspectives on topics of importance to the scientific community, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) has recently opened two offices in China. The main responsibility of ASBMB China is to publish a selection of ASBMB journal articles that the Society feels to be of particular interest to the scientists in Asia. Each article that appears in the compendium will be published with a commentary by a prominent Asian scientist.
ASBMB’s central office in China is located at Guangzhou, China, at the Guangzhou Institute of Biomedicine and Health, Chinese Academy of Sciences (GIBH). The other office is at Tsinghua University Medical School in Beijing, whose major undertaking is to promote the Society in Beijing and the northern part of China. The overall operation of ASBMB China is handled by Dr. Duanqing PEI. Dr. Pei is a professor and the deputy director general of GIBH, and the only member of the Journal of Biological Chemistry Editorial Board from mainland China. Both offices opened on December 1, 2006, and will be an official dedication in the spring this year.
ASBMB is a nonprofit scientific and educational organization, with 11,900 members and three scientific and educational journals (Journal of Biological Chemistry, Molecular and Cellular Proteomics, Journal of Lipid Research), the perspective of which is to advance the science of biochemistry and molecular biology.