Volume 16 Issue 2, February 2019

How AI can help track animals and why breakfast powers collaboration.

Researchers have developed two optogenetic tools for probing and controlling phase separation in living cells.

Researchers have developed the first fully genetically encodable eukaryotic bioluminescent system.

A three-component system of epigenetic writers and readers preserves memory over many generations of cells.

Functional ultrasound imaging enables unbiased identification of behaviorally relevant brain regions across the whole brain.

A protein nanopore sensor detects transient protein–protein interactions at single-molecule resolution.

Editing the genome of human embryos is ethically fraught. But some projects show how diligent, ethical work can grow the gene-editing field.

An interactive online resource integrated in the GPCRdb hub presents tools to design GPCR constructs and determine appropriate experimental conditions for structural studies by crystallography and cryo-EM.

Logistic regression predicts differential gene expression and transcript usage.

MAGIC introduces conjugative plasmids into complex microbial communities in situ, enabling genetic modifications in gut microbiota.

NIR-GECO1, the first near-infrared genetically encoded calcium ion (Ca²⁺) indicator, enables improved Ca²⁺ imaging in conjunction with blue-light-activated optogenetic tools and multiplexed imaging in cell cultures and tissue slices.

A single-photon detector array enables robust and versatile image scanning microscopy (ISM) on any confocal microscope. This implementation makes super-resolution FLIM possible and eases a transition from confocal microscopy to ISM.

The idtracker.ai software tracks freely moving animals in large groups of up to 100 individuals. The tool is versatile and has been applied to groups of fruit flies, zebrafish, medaka, ants and mice.

Trogocytosis, the uptake of membrane proteins by an antigen-presenting cell from its cognate T cell, allows the identification of neoepitopes targeted by T cell receptors with high sensitivity.

Engineered, bifunctional receptors present antigens and initiate signaling in response to binding to the cognate T cell receptor. Libraries built with SABRs can screen thousands of epitopes for the discovery of T cell target antigens.

Fitting the correlation profile of synonymous substitutions within a metagenomics sample can allow one to infer the rate of recombination, gene pool diversity, the fraction of the genome covered by recombination and the relative age of the sample.