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The Last Hurrah.

This issue of Seminars in Liver Disease, devoted to gut microbiota and hepatic disease and guest edited by Professor EamonnM. M. Quigley, is the journal’s 144th regular quarterly issue since Seminarswas launched in 1981. Its content deals with such currently hot topics as the nature and mechanisms of the ongoing conversation nowknown to occur between the gut and the liver, the implications of that conversation for liver and biliary tract disease, and experimental therapeutic innovations such as fecal microbiota transplants (FMTs), a subject probably considered too revolting to be included in polite conversation at the time of that first issue. Indeed, perusal of the tables of contents of Seminars’ 144 issues provides an interesting summary of the focus of both the science and clinical practice of hepatology over the past 36 years. Although the titles of the issues confirm our discipline’s continuing interest in the diagnosis, pathophysiology, andmanagement of themost prevalent liver diseases— the various forms of viral hepatitis, alcoholic hepatitis, drugrelated liver diseases, diseases of the biliary tract, and a selection of metabolic and genetic disorders—the titles of individual articles confirm the subtle, but progressive infiltration of more and more basic science: not only good old biochemistry and physiology, but also molecular biology, cell biology, immunology, virology, the pathobiology of fibrosis, and modern genetics, among others, into our content. This is as it should be, indeed as it must be, if hepatology as a discipline is to remain, in the service of our patients, at the cutting edge of clinical medicine. The goal of Seminars from the very beginning, established by the original Editorial Board and strongly supported by our Publisher, Henry Stratton, and our subtle, low-key, behindthe-scenes advisor, Hans Popper, was to provide a platform for our readers that—over time—would keep them up-to-date with what was important in both the clinical practice and scientific underpinnings of contemporary hepatology. We believe that we have largely accomplished that goal, a belief supported by Seminars’ Impact Factor, which has averaged 5.9 over the past 10 years, ranking 11th among 78 Gastroenterology and Hepatology journals for which such data are collected. The durable value of the reviews published in Seminars is suggested by its cumulative 5-year Impact Factor, as calculated by Journal Citation Reports. The latest (2015) value is 7.50, ranking 8th among the 78 GI/Liver competitors. The next issue of Seminars will reflect the ideas of my successors, Drs. Gregory Gores and Jordi Bruix. Both are experienced members of Seminars’ Editorial Board, and each has served—over the years—as Guest Editor of several high Impact Factor issues. They fully share my goals for Seminars and those of our founders, but will bring their own new ideas and a new energy to the enterprise, along with an explicit goal to further enhance its impact. It goes without saying that I wish them and the new Editorial Board every success. Editing Seminars has been one of my major professional activities for more than three decades. However, simultaneously with the launching of Seminars, my professional identity and research interests were both evolving. I transformed from a Nathaniel Berlinand Louis Wassermantrained hematologist, interested in myeloproliferative diseases, hemolytic anemias, and the hematologic aspects of bilirubin metabolism, into a Sheila Sherlock-trained hepatologist, focused not just on general clinical hepatology, but more specifically, on hereditary hyperbilirubinemias, hepatic bilirubin disposition, and—in parallel—the hepatic disposition of other classes of organic anions, notably longchain fatty acids (LCFAs). The latter led inexorably to an interest in fatty liver. It was virtually dogma in the early 1980s that LCFA entered cells by passive diffusion.My colleagues and Iwere among the first to establish that LCFAs entered at least some cell types, notably adipocytes, hepatocytes, and cardiac myocytes, by regulatable, facilitated transport. These observations were not initially well received; for several years any reviewer of our manuscripts or grant applications had merely to state, in