Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Only a subset of single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) can be genotyped in genome-wide association studies. Imputation methods can infer the alleles of 'hidden' variants and use those inferences to test the hidden variants for association.
A gout drug has been approved by the FDA, the first in 40 years, with three more in the wings. What accounts for this sudden slew of gout therapies? Jill U. Adams investigates.
More needs to be done to tap the potential of drug discovery programs in mid-tier biotech companies for innovative treatments against neglected diseases.
Although fewer antibody fragments have entered the clinic than full-length monoclonal antibodies, proof-of-concept studies for these therapeutics remain the main hurdle.
Many enzymes in eukaryotic and prokaryotic proteomes have no known substrate. Bachovchin et al. use the fluorescence polarization signal of broad-spectrum, activity-based probes to find inhibitors of such enzymes in high-throughput screens.
Ball et al. exploit next-generation sequencing to detect methylation across the human genome. A targeted approach uses padlock probes and bisulfite-treated DNA, whereas an untargeted method relies on the methylation-sensitive restriction enzyme HpaII.
Although technically feasible, whole-genome analysis of cytosine methylation using bisulfite sequencing remains prohibitively expensive for large eukaryotic genomes. Deng et al. use 30,000 nondegenerate padlock probes to capture ∼66,000 bisulfite-converted sites in human CpG islands and compare their methylation in fibroblasts, embryonic stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells.