Section Editor:
Prof. Cheng Li, Peking University, China. 

Quantitative Biology (QB) is a cross-disciplinary forum for research progresses on modeling, understanding and engineering life. It has published many cutting-edge reviews, perspectives and research articles on computational biology, systems biology and synthetic biology. As huge amounts of omics data are being accumulated in these fields, more and more biological studies are becoming data-driven. Mathematical and statistical models, bioinformatics methods, algorithms and analysis pipelines are becoming crucial in all these fields. However, most publications focus on scientific results. It is often challenging for readers to fully understand and replicate published methods, algorithms or pipelines, due to insufficient description on them in the original papers and their supplementary materials. 
To provide a solution to this issue, we are launching a new article type: Protocols and Tutorials. Through systematic and comprehensive description of data analysis models, algorithms, pipelines and/or software (MAPS) in important published scientific studies, these new types of articles will not only help authors to better promote their analysis methods, but also help bioinformatic and biological readers to follow these data analysis protocols and tutorials to apply them effectively in their own work. 
We invite authors to submit Protocol and Tutorial manuscripts for the MAPS that have been developed or used in published studies. Submissions will be processed in a special channel to ensure timely publication following major methods or biological discovery papers. We also welcome authors to contact us for this type of publications when their methods or discovery papers are in the final round of revision in major journals, so that the MAPS protocol or tutorial papers may be published at the same time as the main paper. 

Manuscript format:
The manuscript should be arranged in the following order:
1.Title section (This section must be including Title, Running Title, Authors, Author Affiliations, and Correspondence)
2.Abstract
3.Introduction
4.Materials (Please include a list of the essential materials such as any special equipment or computers required, so that users can identify the product, e.g. company website, product code.)
5.Protocol/Tutorial (A numbered list of data analysis instructions is preferred in this section. A published data set and analysis outputs such as figures and screenshots can be used to illustrate the protocol. If the protocol should be broken into several separate stages, please highlight subheadings and resume the numbered list.)
6. Discussion (summary, limitations and possible future developments of the MAPS)
7. Acknowledgements and Funding
8. Compliance with Ethics Guidelines. 
9. References. 
10. Figures and legends.
11. Tables and legends. 
12. Supplemental materials (combined into a single PDF file)

Manuscripts should be submitted online at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/qb . Please indicate that the submission is for the “Protocol and Tutorial” section. 
For further information, please contact us:
Cheng Li (cheng_li@pku.edu.cn)
Editorial office (tianmm@hep.com.cn)