Chromosoma, now in its 86th year, remains as respected a journal as it ever was. Yet, like all of the organisms that have appeared in Chromosoma over the past nine decades, the journal itself is not immune to aging. Submissions are getting fewer, citations less frequent, and article processing is taking a bit longer, compared to the growing number of younger and perhaps more versatile competitors.

Despite these challenges, Chromosoma is demonstrating an uncanny capacity to adapt to changing circumstances, like the epigenetic makeup of the chromosomes that have been the journals perennial focus. And while rejuvenation remains a distant dream for most of biology, the “Biology of the Nucleus” has a chance of achieving exactly that in form of our upcoming merger with Chromosome Research - reminiscent of reprogramming through parabiosis, a process where an older organism is fused with a younger one to revitalize itself (Ashapkin et al. 2020). The merged journal will carry the “younger” title, Chromosome Research along with Chromosoma’s byline that so well defines the content both journals care about: “Biology of the Nucleus”.

While the future is hard to predict, we can most certainly learn from and build on a stellar past, which was full of scientific highlights, but also its fair share of change. Starting out as “Zeitschrift für Zellforschung und Mikroskopische Anatomie Abt. B Chromosoma” in December of 1939, our journal published many of its works in German, and some even in French. While reflecting the scientific landscape of the time, this must have surely been frustrating to some readers who would have loved to learn more “ Über die Rolle der Desoxyribosenukleinsäure bei der Zellteilung ”, especially in times when ChatGPT or Google Translate were all but inconceivable (Caspersson 1939). In the late 1970s, the decision was made to stick to the now universal language of science, which has solidified Chromosoma as a journal “representing every facet of the nucleus, and [voices] from countries all around the world”, to borrow the words of my predecessor, Yamini Dalal (Dalal 2021). This was no doubt a change for the better, as, not surprisingly, Chromosoma’s most cited works appeared in English.

It is worth taking a moment to highlight some of the notable discoveries, through which Chromosoma has changed our understanding of the “Biology of the Nucleus”. A prominent example is the seminal discovery of a family of centromeric-specific proteins, CENP-A CENP-B, and CENP-C, by Earnshaw and Rothfield in 1985, which has been instrumental in advancing our understanding of chromosome segregation. To celebrate the anniversary of this discovery, Chromosoma, together with Chromosome Research, have put together a joint special issue entitled “40 years of CENP-A”, with contributions by over 40 experts from across the globe. The first articles have already appeared online, and we look forward to seeing the collection completed by the end of the year.

For other examples of influential papers going back as early as 1952, I refer the reader to an excellent compilation published in celebration of Chromosoma’s 75th anniversary by then Editor-in-Chief Erich Nigg (Nigg 2014). It is worth noting that Chromosoma’s influence has not ceded since then, featuring many new discoveries - often in underexplored model organisms - ranging from the regulation of mRNA splicing to the evolution of ribosomal DNA loci and microsatellite repeats (Matsubara et al. 2016; Sochorova et al. 2018; Zhou and Fu 2013), to meiotic and mitotic chromosome organization (Misulovin et al. 2008; Ruiz-Herrera et al. 2017; Sun et al. 2015). Moreover, Chromosoma continues to disseminate novel or improved methodologies and tools used by many in the community, as evident from their numerous citations (e.g. Martins 2021; Karg and Golic 2018).

Naturally, science has changed dramatically over the course of nine decades, and Chromosoma’s many formative reports reflect the state of science as well as the vision of the journal at the respective time. Going forward, we will need to acknowledge that there is a shift in biology from the detailed investigation of a specific question to the collection and analysis of big data, inspiring ever more complex biological questions. While we will always support timely, thorough and creative research that advances the field of chromosome biology, we also need to proactively solicit well-curated data collections, from Proteomics to Next Generation Sequencing, that provide relevant resources for future research in our field. We should equally encourage submissions that analyze already existing data sets to develop novel, testable hypotheses.

It would be naïve to think that even a rejuvenated “Biology of the Nucleus” will be able to compete with the many “top journals” in attracting the most eye-catching research. What Chromosoma did best in the past is to publish work that has longevity, as beautifully stated in Erich Nigg’s 75th Anniversary editorial (Nigg 2014). My hope is that we will continue to do so, by providing a platform for rigorous advances that will stand the test of time and influence research for decades to come, rather than have a high immediacy factor or the potential to temporarily blow up social media feeds.

I conclude by thanking our readers, authors, reviewers and scientific editors. Without you, our readers, the science we publish would go unnoticed. We hope that the loyal Chromosoma following will stick with us through the upcoming changes for the next chapter in the “Biology of the Nucleus”. Without our authors, the journal would not exist, and discoveries would remain cloistered in lab notebooks without realizing their potential to inspire further research. We hope you will continue to send your best-suited research our way. Without our scientific editors and reviewer, who work on their own time and without compensation, we would not be able to ensure the quality and rigor of the research we strive to publish. We are thrilled that many of the existing editorial board members have agreed to continue on after the merger. It has been a pleasure to serve as your Editor-in-Chief, albeit briefly and with the dubious honor of being Chromosoma’s LAST Editor-in-Chief. I hope that by continuing in this role to lead the next chapter, together with my colleague Beth Sullivan from Chromosome Research, we can carry on the legacy of Chromosoma with you, our readers, authors and editors.