Marine Drugs | Requirements for Manuscripts with Biological Data

We are happy to announce Marine Drugs’ (ISSN: 1660-3397) requirements for manuscripts with biological data in the instructions for authors. The requirements have been written by Prof. Dr. Marc Diederich and are available online.

Requirements for Manuscripts with Biological Data:

Western Blots:

• Western blot experiments need to be presented with a loading control and molecular size markers;
• If multiple blots are used for the same figure, a loading control needs to be present for each Western blot used;
• Western blots need to be performed at least in triplicate, quantified, and results presented as a graph with statistical evaluation.

Animals:

• The authors are asked to indicate the number of animals used and whether randomization and blinding procedures were used;
• Moreover, the materials and methods section should indicate the animal age, species, strain, and sex.

Cell Lines:

• The authors are asked to indicate the origin and number of passages of all of the cell lines used;
• The authors must provide information about cell culture media (e.g., type of medium as well as type and quantity of serum) and conditions of incubation (e.g., seeding concentrations) or any further important information allowing the repetition of experiments in the same conditions.

Anticancer Potential and Cell Death:

• Authors assessing the anticancer activity of novel compounds are asked to compare the cytotoxic or cytostatic potential to a non-cancerous cell type and calculate the differential toxicity;
• The authors must quantify all the concentration- and dose-dependent experiments by indicating IC50 and/or EC50 values;
• For all cell death experiments, authors are asked to use a bona fide cytotoxic control compound in comparison to the newly identified anticancer molecule.

Statistics:

• For every experiment, the authors must indicate the number of experimental replicates;
• For every statistical claim, the authors must correct for multiple testing and indicate the exact statistical test used (e.g., t-test, one-sided, or two-sided), the level of confidence, and likelihood (e.g., p-values);
• When using external statistical tools and packages, the original reference to the prior work is used;
• For every figure, when applicable, the authors indicate statistical significance (e.g., using stars) and denote error bars. The statistical test, thresholds used, and error bars are defined in the figure caption.

Molecular Biology:

• The authors need to provide a comprehensive list of primers for manuscripts using PCR and siRNA.

If you have any questions about the requirements, please write to Marine Drugs Editorial Office at marinedrugs@mdpi.com.