Volume 18 Issue 3, March 2021

Connecting the Ming dynasty to sharper views in brain imaging.

All that glitters is not gold. —William Shakespeare

Human tonsil organoids recapitulate key features of the antigen-specific B cell response.

Researchers report a method to generate two-component protein arrays on living cells, which enables controlled receptor clustering.

Metastatic dynamics are revealed by integrating single-cell lineage tracing and RNA sequencing.

3D pRESOLFT enables volumetric live cell imaging with high spatial and temporal resolution.

TopoBuilder enables de novo design of proteins bearing complex structural motifs.

Beyond the well-known pantheon of model organisms are others. A shift is underway to level the playing field.

A genetically encoded neurotransmitter sensor, engineered from a tick lipocalin, detects serotonin in the living brain.

In vacuum, a monolayer graphene cover enables imaging mass spectrometry of living, wet cells.

The DRACO algorithm deconvolutes coexisting RNA structures from mutational profiling experiments, and can be applied to bacterial regulatory structures and elements from the SARS-CoV-2 genome.

Commonly used organic dyes can photoconvert to blue-shifted fluorescent species, especially under intense illumination. The mechanism of this process and how to avoid unwanted artifacts in super-resolution microscopy are explored here.

G-GESS is a serotonin biosensor, derived from a tick serotonin-binding protein. The biosensor has been applied here in cell culture, primary neurons, mouse brain slices and in vivo in the mouse brain.

Advances in single-cell sequencing technologies enable generation of datasets of millions of cells. scfind facilitates efficient and sophisticated gene search in massive single-cell datasets.

Total Variational Inference is a framework for end-to-end analysis of paired transcriptome and protein measurements such as CITE-seq data in single cells.

Paired-Tag offers a multiomics assay for joint profiling of histone modifications and gene expression in single nuclei, and is applied to mouse frontal cortex and hippocampus for measuring cell-type-resolved chromatin state and transcriptome.

This work reports a dual transposase–peroxidase fusion to survey the accessible chromatin regions and the proximal proteome in one assay, providing a tool to capture both the genomic and proteomic contents of open chromatin.

Nuc-MS makes use of top–down mass spectrometry in ‘native’ mode to quantitatively interrogate histone proteoforms and their post-translational modifications in a single experiment.

HD-fMOST is a microscopy technique for imaging large samples at high throughput and with high definition, which is achieved with a line-illumination modulation approach. The technology is illustrated by imaging fluorescently labeled neurons in whole mouse brains.

Application of a single layer of graphene to untreated wet mammalian cells enables mass spectrometry imaging of cellular membranes of live cells in solution at subcellular resolution.