Multi-pass flow cytometry via laser-light barcodes

This issue highlights a high-throughput method for the rapid discovery of high-affinity antibodies, the large-scale mass-spectrometric quantification of glycopeptides in plasma, an assay for the identification, sorting and profiling of killer cells, high-throughput microfluidics for the identification of druggable regulators of cell secretion, the prediction of interactions between drugs and intestinal drug transporters, the high-throughput identification of genetic and cellular drivers of syncytium formation induced by SARS-CoV-2, multi-pass flow cytometry for measuring single-cell dynamics, and an assay for sensing the DNA-mismatch tolerance of Cas9.

The cover illustrates that barcoding cells with microparticles that emit near-infrared laser light allows for multi-pass flow cytometry with more markers and fewer colours.

See Kwok et al.

Stable transposon-driven integration of transgenes into immune cells

This issue highlights optimized base editors targeting the exon-7 mutation in SMN2 to restore the expression of the survival motor neuron protein to normal levels, the virus-mediated delivery of a transposon and an mRNA-encoded transposase for the integration of transgenes into immune cells, the enhanced viability of genome-engineered T cells transfected by electroporation via an isotonic buffer that dampens cytosolic cGAS–DNA interactions, the annotation of variants of the BRCA2 gene in human pluripotent stem cells, that host genes involved in viral processes can constrain the lentiviral delivery and expression of Cas13, and that replacing amino acid residues in an immunodominant and conserved T cell epitope in the capsid of an adeno-associated virus can abrogate its immunogenicity while preserving its function and potency.

The cover illustrates a gene-delivery system that enhances the stability of the integration of a desired transgene in immune cells by relying on a Sleeping Beauty transposase encoded into an mRNA delivered by an adeno-associated virus.

See Ye et al.

Modelling latent structures in neural activity to better predict behaviour

This issue highlights computational methods for use in multi-omics microsampling to profile lifestyle-associated changes, for the design of humanized versions of antibodies with improved stability, for the optimization of monoclonal antibodies for reduced self-association and non-specific binding, for the classification of tumour type and the prediction of microsatellite status on the basis of somatic mutations, for describing macroscopic resting-state brain dynamics, and for modelling nonlinear latent factors and structures in the activity of neural populations to enable flexible inference.

The cover illustrates that latent factors and latent structures in the activity of neural populations can be computationally modelled to better predict neural activity and behaviour.

See Abbaspourazad et al.