Volume 16 Issue 7, July 2019

Microbiomes play critical roles in ecosystems and human health, yet in most cases scientists lack standardized and reproducible model microbial communities. The development of fabricated microbial ecosystems, which we term EcoFABs, will provide such model systems for microbiome studies.

Developments in genetically encoded voltage indicators and imaging strategies enable the recording of multiple neurons with good signal-to-noise ratios in behaving mice.

A library of degrons allows tuning of half-life and expression levels of proteins in genetic circuits.

A global-scale survey of the ocean viral metagenome (virome) broadens views on marine viruses and their roles in ecosystems.

Multicolor calcium indicators pave the way to a better understanding of information processing in the brain.

Blocking the active sites of proteins with a photocaged tyrosine allows for temporally precise photoactivation of a wide range of proteins of interest.

The gut, plant roots, ocean sediments: microbiome engineers travel to explore and model microbially complex systems.

Understanding of fundamental questions in human embryology is hampered by limited access to in utero developmental events. Manfrin et al. have engineered an in vitro platform that recapitulates early morphogenic events of human development with unprecedented spatial and temporal control.

The Consortium for Top-Down Proteomics presents a decision-tree-based guide to sample preparation and analysis protocols for researchers performing top-down mass-spectrometry-based analysis of intact proteins.

Members of the hydrogen deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (HDX-MS) community provide their ‘best practices’ recommendations for HDX-MS data collection, analysis and reporting.

The protein-level assembler can assemble protein catalogs from raw metagenomic sequencing data, enabling large-scale metagenomics studies.

Pathway-level information extractor (PLIER) uses prior knowledge of pathways to extract biologically interpretable latent variables from large gene expression datasets.

A thermophoretic trapping approach enables users to observe the behavior of single amyloid fibrils in solution for hours without any immobilization.

Two-photon microscopy in combination with adaptive optics enables diffraction-limited morphological and functional imaging up to around 800 μm below the pia. This is achieved with the help of fluorescent microvessels serving as guidestars.

Tagging live single cells and nuclei with lipid- or cholesterol-modified oligonucleotides enables massive scRNA-seq sample multiplexing, identifies doublets and recovers cells with low RNA content.

FEAST provides a computationally efficient tool to estimate the contribution of microbial sources to a target microbial community, as demonstrated for a variety of complex environmental samples.

A fusion of CIBN to dCas9 and a Cry2 bridge enables blue-light-inducible long-range chromatin loops.

A microfluidic approach allows spatiotemporal control of morphogen distribution in human pluripotent stem cell cultures. This approach recapitulates early developmental processes such as localized signaling and symmetry-breaking events.

The ‘jGCaMP7’ sensors are four genetically encoded calcium indicators with better sensitivity than state-of-the-art GCaMP6 and specifically improved for applications such as neuropil or wide-field imaging. The sensors are validated in vivo in both flies and mice.