A Research Article is comprised of several methodological approaches resulting in a completed research study. It should explain molecular mechanisms of biological functions and/or diseases, and may also include molecular models resulting from the studies. In the studies involving noncoding RNA molecules the Authors should consider the following issues:
- The rationale to study a particular noncoding RNA needs to be specified in the introduction.
- Studies concerning the function of these RNAs via mediating a single target or pathway should include studies on additional multiple targets/pathways to prove functional specificity.
- Their proposed function should be verified via the studies of the gain and/or loss of function. Detailed studies of signalling pathway(s) regulated by specific RNA should be carried out.
- Details of the initial screen used to identify RNA species involvement in pathway/disease (number of subjects, statistical tests employed, percent change from controls) should be provided if applicable.
Please review the Editorial Policies around the use of human subjects/material/data and animal research before writing your Ethics Declarations.
All animal research (vertebrates and regulated invertebrates) must comply with institutional, national, or international guidelines, and where available should have been approved by an appropriate ethics committee. We ask authors consider the ethical guidelines published by the International Council for Laboratory Animal Science (ICLAS). Research involving animals must be approved by the appropriate ethics committee and that information must be present in your Ethics Declaration.
In the Ethics Declaration, you should provide:
- the number and date of ethics approval and information for that local ethics committee as confirming that they follow the Declaration of Helsinki for human research.
- a statement detailing compliance with relevant guidelines and/or the number and dates of the ethics approval for animal research. The Editor will take account of animal welfare issues and reserves the right to reject a manuscript, especially if the research involves protocols that are inconsistent with commonly accepted norms of animal research.
Cellular & Molecular Biology Letters strongly encourages that all datasets on which the conclusions of the paper rely should be available to readers. We encourage authors to ensure that their datasets are either deposited in publicly available repositories (where available and appropriate) or presented in the main manuscript or additional supporting files whenever possible. Please see Springer Nature’s information on recommended repositories. Where a widely established research community expectation for data archiving in public repositories exists, submission to a community-endorsed, public repository is mandatory. A list of data where deposition is required, with the appropriate repositories, can be found on the Editorial Policies Page.
Western Blots & Gels
For any submissions which include images from gels or western blots, authors are required to include their raw image files as supplementary files during submission.
The minimum acceptable amount of Western blot biological replicates per experiment is 3. Thus, 3 replicates for each western blot presented in main and supplemental should be provided. Furthermore, the Western blot replicates should be organized in such a way that so that each replicate's complete set along with the matching loading control is presented.
Note: Three biological replicates should be provided, not different exposures of the very same membranes.
Full blots should be original, unprocessed and described to allow figure and line identification. They should be clearly marked which figure and which replicate they represent. Raw western blots should be uncropped (not trimmed) and contain the molecular weight marker originally merged with the image of the detected bands. Fragments used in the particular figures should be framed. If cropped, before treatment, at least 25% of the full length of the WB sheet should be visible over the band of interest, and 25% should be visible below it.
Failure to do so could cause delays in reviewing the manuscript. All images are checked by software for detection of duplication or manipulation before acceptance.
Language quality check
Authors should be aware that Springer Nature offers a free service whereby authors can have their manuscript checked for grammatical and readability before submissions. We encourage authors to make use of this tool to improve the quality of their manuscript.
Graphical abstract image
A graphical abstract image must be uploaded during submission. This is a picture which will appear underneath the Abstract on the journal website.
It should be relevant to the topic covered and serve to attract readers' attention to the article. The graphical abstract image may be one of the images included in the article or any other image the authors feel to be appropriate. It must have landscape orientation, approximately 920 pixels width x 300 pixels height, and should be uploaded as a JPEG, PNG or SVG file. Please note that graphical abstract images must comply with BMC's copyright policy.
Title
In order to increase the visibility of and citations to your articles, The Editors strongly encourage authors to check with indexing sites (such as PubMed) before using acronyms or abbreviations in the title of their article. Authors should limit the use of abbreviations or acronyms within the title with exceptions for cases where this is the more commonly accepted way of writing of the disease or term based on the results of this indexer search (such as DNA, RNA, CRISPR, ALS).