The cover image of the December 17 issue of Biophysical Journal was created by an irreproducible combination of drawing by hand, scanning, and editing with Paint.  I liked the result, because it was simple and reminded me of the “underground” artwork of Robert Crumb in Zap Comix published in the late 1960s.  The subject is a unique ion channel that I stumbled across in June of 1990.  At that time, only a dozen papers had been published on this channel, and no one else in the world was studying it.  I found that trying to understand this novel molecule was far more exciting than joining the throngs of scientists pursuing better-known channels.  I had researched several other ion channels, but to understand proton channels required learning about the exotic properties of protons, proton conduction, and proton reactions both in aqueous solutions and in other molecules (such as those involved in bioenergetics).  I was thrilled to attend my first Gordon Research Conference on Protons and Membrane Reactions, where I could ask questions of famous scientists whose papers I had read: Howard Berg, Peter Brzezinski, Anthony Crofts, P. Leslie Dutton, Shelagh Ferguson-Miller, Robert Fillingame, Marilyn Gunner, Hemi Gutman, Wolfgange Junge, Ron Kaback, Terry Krulwich, Janos Lanyi, Hartmut Michel, John Nagle, Mark Paddock, Régis Pomès, Steve Scheiner, David Silverman, John Walker, Arieh Warshel, Mårten Wikström, and Colin Wraight.  Found in many human cells, proton channels have important roles in white blood cells killing pathogens, in sperm fertilizing ova, and in maintaining acid-base balance in various cells.  They also exist in plants and plankton-like coccolithophores, which are important in global carbon cycles, and in dinoflagellates, where they conduct the action potential that triggers the bioluminescent flash seen in the ocean at night.

— Artem G. Ayuyan, Vladimir V. Cherny, Gustavo Chaves, Boris Musset, Fredric S. Cohen, and Thomas E. DeCoursey