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Optical stimulation of channelrhodopsin-2 expressed in neurons of the motor cortex is combined with electromyogram recordings or motion-sensing of limb muscles to achieve fast motor mapping in the mouse.
Improved photoactivatable red fluorescent proteins are generated by including properties desirable for photoactivated localization microscopy (PALM) as selection criteria. The PAmCherry proteins are superior tags for one- and two-color PALM in fixed cells, among other applications. Also in this issue, McKinney et al. present an improved version of the green-to-red EosFP protein.
A piezo-resistive dual-cantilever system is combined with fluorescence imaging to examine the mechanical features of the in vitro–assembled vertebrate meiotic spindle.
A device that traps cells in micrometer-sized capture cups efficiently achieves cell pairing and subsequent chemically or electrically induced fusion. The authors show that fused NIH 3T3 cells continue to be viable and morphologically normal off the chip, and they also show reprogramming of mouse embryonic fibroblasts after fusion with embryonic stem cells.
A ratiometric fluorescent sensor that reports the ATP/ADP concentration ratio in living cells was created by fusing the bacterial regulatory protein GlnK1 to a circularly permuted fluorescent protein. The sensor detected inhibition of cellular metabolism caused by transient removal of glucose from the cellular medium or administration of a glycolytic inhibitor.
