News & Views in 2007

Luminescent conjugated polymers (LCPs) bind to prion aggregates and emit different fluorescent spectra depending on their binding conformation. As such, they are promising tools for investigating the biophysical basis of prion strains.

Parasite infections such as malaria threaten the lives of millions of people around the globe. New genetic tools have been developed to evaluate parasite proteins as targets for urgently needed drug and vaccine development.

Methods relying on dense arrays of synthetic oligodeoxynucleotides to target specific subsets of the human genome may enable routine resequencing of all human exons or multi-megabase-pair chromosomal regions.

An aspirin-modulated gene expression control circuit provides a powerful method to regulate expression of bacterial genes inside an infected host. This should provide a safe and easy way to study host-pathogen interactions, and may have direct therapeutic applications.

A high-throughput procedure for genome-wide identification of genetic interactions in Schizosaccharomyces pombe.

An innovative use of HSV-1 vectors lays the foundation for a novel genetic screen for modulators of ligand-gated ion channels.

MicroRNAs are not amenable to classical RNAi-based knockdown strategies, but genetic 'sponges' that compete microRNAs away from their natural targets create a microRNA 'knockdown'.

Precisely scaled microfluidics channels for optical recordings of neuronal activity in live and behaving organisms.

The adaptation of the protein misfolding cyclic amplification assay (PMCA) to use recombinant hamster prion protein (PrP) as a substrate shows promise for both basic research applications and clinical diagnostic assays.

Two research groups describe different but complementary advances in bioluminescent-probe design that improve this often underappreciated relative of fluorescence imaging. In addition to being brighter, bioluminescent probes now span a larger color range.

Next-generation sequencing technology combines with chromatin immunoprecipitation to provide a genome-wide look at transcription-factor binding.

Application of a wider range of imaging techniques to cancer research in zebrafish will advance the utility of this exciting model.

A new method for expressing functional RNA molecules in vivo opens a route to easy RNA sample preparation, and establishes a set of tools for studies of RNA structure, interactions and function in vitro and in vivo.

A new mass spectrometry (MS) approach has been developed, allowing combinatorial analysis of histone H3.2 post-translational modifications that may provide the key to unlocking the histone code.

Several new approaches to tag mRNA allow real-time imaging of mRNA dynamics in living bacteria, yeast and human cells.

Enzymatically generated small interfering RNAs are a welcome addition in the tool box of scientists performing large-scale RNAi screens.

Although new super-resolution imaging techniques provide valuable biological insights, some applications, such as determining the organization of neural projections in the brain, are better served by comprehensive imaging of very large samples at lower resolution.

Researchers describe a general and highly efficient approach for incorporating a variety of unnatural amino acids into proteins at desired locations in mammalian cells.

Vectors allowing hydrophilic compounds to gain access to the cell interior are needed to reach new therapeutic targets. Transduction peptides have opened the way to this, but their chemical mimics may be of even greater interest.