Volume 17 Issue 3, March 2020

How joy and wide-ranging curiosity leads to neurobiology tools for new types of questions.

Combining cryogenic super-resolution microscopy and focused ion beam scanning electron microscopy allows nanoscale views of protein architecture in the context of cellular ultrastructure in whole cells.

Photoacoustic topography through an ergodic relay increases imaging throughput and opens a path toward wearable devices.

Recent developments in deep-learning-based methods improve protein structure prediction.

A framework for evaluating tools that reconstruct tumor subclonal structure.

Researchers identify a broad phylogenetic diversity of nucleocytoplasmic large DNA viruses by mining global-scale metagenomics datasets.

Some -omics tools can be more accurate, sensitive or efficient than others. Yet benchmarking is no tell-all.

New methods from the Heo and Johnsson labs enable light- and drug-inducible control of intrabody binding in cells.

This Perspective describes the development and capabilities of SciPy 1.0, an open source scientific computing library for the Python programming language.

Engineered nanobody allows reversible control of activity in cells through the binding of small molecules.

Reverberation two-photon microscopy enables video-rate multiplane neuroimaging by performing near-instantaneous axial scanning over large depth ranges while maintaining 3D micrometer-scale resolution.

High-speed two-photon laser scanning microscopy using a passive laser scanner based on free-space angular-chirp-enhanced delay achieves frame rates suitable for voltage imaging in vivo in the mouse brain.

Integrating a Bessel focus module into a two-photon fluorescence mesoscope enables high-speed volumetric imaging of neuronal activity in soma, dendrites and spines.

The combination of Intel SGX platform with sketching algorithms enables efficient compaction of genomic data and the execution of secure GWAS in an untrusted cloud environment.

Phenotypic earth mover’s distance (PhEMD) facilitates the comparison of single-cell experimental conditions, each of which is a high-dimensional dataset, and identifies axes of variation among multicellular biospecimens.

Ubiquitous mammalian enzymes can scavenge uracil analogs, leading to non-specific background in cell-type-specific RNA labeling. This work reveals the enzymes involved and describes the uridine/cytidine kinase 2 and 2′-azidouridine pair as a highly specific and non-toxic alternative.

SMAC-seq combines long-read sequencing with open chromatin methylation by DNA methyltransferases to enable mapping of nucleosome position and chromatin accessibility.

Q-scores provide a quantitative metric for resolvability in cryo-EM maps, and can be used at the atom, residue or macromolecule scale.

Mass cytometry in combination with a thiol-reactive barcoding strategy allows analysis and comparison of cell-type-specific signaling networks in organoids.

Complex behaviors and the underlying neural activity in adult zebrafish can be accessed through a virtual reality system in combination with two-photon microscopy.