Biological techniques articles within Nature Materials

Featured

  • News & Views |

    Biophysical factors in an optimized three-dimensional microenvironment enhance the reprogramming efficiency of human somatic cells into pluripotent stem cells when compared to traditional cell-culture substrates.

    • Oscar J. Abilez
    •  & Joseph C. Wu

  • News & Views |

    A spool-and-ribbon cell-culture approach provides quick and easy access to the interior of engineered tumours for the analysis of cell responses to molecular gradients.

    • Peter DelNero
    •  & Claudia Fischbach

  • News & Views |

    A protein complex found to align with the direction of a magnetic field could be a key piece in the puzzle of how animals detect magnetic fields.

    • Kenneth J. Lohmann

  • News & Views |

    The fabrication of a self-sustaining source of low-energy electrons in a single-atom layer could help unravel fundamental mechanisms of radiobiological damage and lead to improved cancer therapies.

    • Léon Sanche

  • News & Views |

    Soft culture substrates improve the yield of functional motor neurons derived from human pluripotent stem cells.

    • Emily Rhodes Lowry
    •  & Christopher E. Henderson

  • News & Views |

    Chloroplasts with extended photosynthetic activity beyond the visible absorption spectrum, and living leaves that perform non-biological functions, are made possible by localizing nanoparticles within plant organelles.

    • Gregory D. Scholes
    •  & Edward H. Sargent

  • Editorial |

    Materials-based imaging agents are attractive candidates for a diverse range of imaging modalities and combined imaging–therapy applications, but economic implications and practical concerns remain obstacles to their clinical translation.

  • News & Views |

    Detection of a wide range of tumours remains a challenge in cancer diagnostics. By exploiting changes in the tumour microenvironment, a pH-responsive polymeric nanomaterial enables ultrasensitive tumour-specific imaging in many types of cancer.

    • Daishun Ling
    • , Michael J. Hackett
    •  & Taeghwan Hyeon

  • Commentary |

    The preclinical intersection of molecular imaging and gene- and cell-based therapies will enable more informed and effective clinical translation. We discuss how imaging can monitor cell and gene fate and function in vivo and overcome barriers associated with these therapies.

    • Nigel G. Kooreman
    • , Julia D. Ransohoff
    •  & Joseph C. Wu

  • Commentary |

    Nanoparticle-based imaging plays a crucial role in cancer diagnosis and treatment. Here, we discuss the modalities used for molecular imaging of the tumour microenvironment and image-guided interventions including drug delivery, surgery and ablation therapy.

    • Chun Li

  • News & Views |

    Advances in photochemistry have profoundly impacted the way in which biology is studied. Now, a photoactivated enzymatic patterning method that offers spatiotemporal control over the presentation of bioactive proteins to direct cells in three-dimensional culture significantly expands the available chemical toolbox.

    • Daniel L. Alge
    •  & Kristi S. Anseth

  • News & Views |

    The application of imaging techniques prevalent in materials science to the biological process of soft tissue calcification lends new insight into age-related cardiovascular disease.

    • Jordan D. Miller

  • News & Views |

    Technologies to isolate colonies of human pluripotent stem cells from other cell types in a high-throughput manner are lacking. A microfluidic-based approach that exploits differences in the adhesion strength between these cells and a substrate may soon fill the gap.

    • Oscar J. Abilez
    •  & Joseph C. Wu

  • News & Views |

    The spreading and differentiation of stem cells depends on the stiffness of the extracellular matrix. Now, experiments on human epidermal and mesenchymal stem cells cultured on substrates with covalently attached collagen fibres show that the cells sense and respond to the anchoring of the collagen fibres to the substrate.

    • Ovijit Chaudhuri
    •  & David J. Mooney

  • News & Views |

    An efficient scheme that realizes broad tunability of photon upconversion in core–shell nanoparticles may lead to applications in biosensing, security labelling and more.

    • Nicholas Kotov

  • Article |

    Plasmonic nanostructures are known to be an attractive platform for highly sensitive molecular sensors, although they often lack specificity. A plasmonic device with a sharp optical resonance tuned to biomolecules selectively captured on the surface of the device now offers a versatile yet highly specific platform for molecular sensing.

    • Chihhui Wu
    • , Alexander B. Khanikaev
    •  & Gennady Shvets

  • News & Views |

    Stem cells that are cultured in the laboratory differentiate in response to the mechanical properties of the substrate and its topography. It is now shown that mesenchymal stem cell multipotency is prolonged when the cells are cultured on a surface patterned with an ordered arrangement of nanoscale pits.

    • Milan Mrksich

  • Letter |

    The in vivo optical detection of bacterial infections requires highly specific imaging probes with small affinity to mammalian tissue. It is now shown that fluorescent dyes that are conjugated to maltohexaose can be internalized rapidly via the bacteria-specific maltodextrin transport pathway, enabling the in vivo imaging of Escherichia coli down to 105 colony-forming units.

    • Xinghai Ning
    • , Seungjun Lee
    •  & Niren Murthy

  • Article |

    On standard tissue culture platforms, mesenchymal stem cells tend to spontaneously differentiate with the loss of multi-lineage potential. Now, a robust and reproducible nanotopographical platform has been shown to maintain stem cell phenotype and promote stem cell growth over several months whilst implicating mechanisms for the observed stem cell behaviour

    • Rebecca J. McMurray
    • , Nikolaj Gadegaard
    •  & Matthew J. Dalby

  • News & Views |

    By combining gene cloning and amplification techniques, a new one-pot, parallel synthesis method for the generation of long, repetitive genes is realized. The method promises to open up the discovery of protein polymer biomaterials.

    • Sheng Ding
    • , Xiaoxiao Wang
    •  & Annelise E. Barron

  • Article |

    A one-pot, high-throughput method for the recombinant polymerization of monomer DNA sequences is reported. The method enables the rapid synthesis of diverse libraries of artificial repetitive polypeptides, exemplified by the isolation of protease-responsive polymers and a family of polypeptides with reversible thermally responsive behaviour.

    • Miriam Amiram
    • , Felipe Garcia Quiroz
    •  & Ashutosh Chilkoti

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