In 2024, Nature Structural & Molecular Biology (NSMB) celebrated its 30th anniversary. Before discussing the standout pieces from our 30th year of publishing excellent research and commentary, we want to thank our authors, reviewers and readers for their support, interest and feedback. The community of researchers, in and outside of academia, cocreate our journal by sending us their very best research, providing input via peer review and sending us their reviews and opinions. We simply could not do it without you.

We are proud to have published studies in diverse areas during the past year, such as molecularmechanismsof infertility; earlydevelopment, includingtotipotency and cell-fatechoice; proteinaggregation in neurodegeneration; autophagy, structurallyorfunctionally; and molecularmetabolism, during ferroptosisorphysiologicalconditions — all of which underscore our broad scope. Whilst our scope has widened, we are keen to maintain our reputation for publishing the very best structural and molecular biology content and have been proud to compile special issues on ubiquitylation, integral membrane proteins and splicing and RNA processing.

To celebrate NSMB’s 30th anniversary, we commissioned pieces to lookback at 30years of NSMB and to look forward and showcase what the future holds for our journal and the research communities that it serves. To this end, we were delighted to publish pieces about how our authors view science, its interaction with different aspects of their lives and society and its potential. We heard from leaders of the structural biology field about whatthefuturemayhold. We showcased intersections between science and art by presenting originalpieces of artin our pages. We featured inspiring stories from scientists, sharing how they use scientific data in their teaching, reflecting on keeping in touch with the fields they have left behind after career crossroads and contemplating how scientific progress permeates and inspires their daily work life. We also published several pieces on the importance of maintaining an open, collaborative scientific community and of providing the resourcesnecessary to keep solving problems. This content is gathered in a Collection.

2024 was also the year that the Nobel foundation recognized landmark achievements by members of the structural and molecular biology communities. The Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine was awarded to Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun “for the discovery of microRNA and its role in post-transcriptional gene regulation.” Carolina and Dimitris, along with Florian from Nature, put together a Collection to highlight research published on this topic in the Nature Portfolio, including workfromthelaureates and reviews on the roles and mechanisms of non-coding RNAs in disease, for example, in obesity, epilepsy and cancer. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry was shared by David Baker “for computational protein design” and Demis Hassabis and John M. Jumper “for protein structure prediction,” acknowledging the effect of their work in the field. Carolina and Kat, along with Angela from Nature, put together a second Collection to highlight relevant work from across the Nature Portfolio, including articlesfrom the winnersandthecommunity, and on topics as variable as self-assembling helical filaments and protein interactions in human pathogens to building completely novel proteins and new protein binders.

This is our last issue of 2024. Included in our final selection of articles for this year is research by Roske and Yeeles that delineates how the leading-strand DNA polymerase ε toggles between its polymerase and exonuclease activities to regulate efficient proofreading, as well as a comprehensive proteomics study by Lanz et al. from the Skotheim lab that shows that genome concentration limits growth in large cells as if it were a limiting nutrient. We also publish structural work by Mittal, Martin et al. from the Coleman and Horanyi labs that reveals how experimental anti-seizure drugs UCB-2500 and padsevonil bind their cellular targets. Additionally, a study by Braxton et al. sheds light on how asymmetry in the mtHsp60 complex is coupled to its client processing.

This year was productive, demanding, celebratory, exciting and fulfilling for the NSMB editorial team. In 2025, we are looking forward to travelling to meet more of our authors and readers in person. For example, we will be attending the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Ubiquitins, Autophagy & Disease meeting, as well as the Keystone Imagining Biomolecules Across Scales conference. If you would like to suggest any meetings that you think we should attend, do not hesitate to reach out to us — we always welcome input.

We are keenly looking forward to reading your submissions and continuing to publish excellent research and thoughtful reviews, news and opinion pieces on any and all topics of interest to the structural and molecular biology research community. We cannot wait for 2025!