Biological techniques articles within Nature Methods

Featured

  • This Month |

    Adapting optics: techniques for seeing stars scale to cells.

    • Monya Baker

  • Brief Communication |

    Conventional extracellular electrode recordings are generally limited to monitoring action potentials. But use of extracellular gold microelectrodes with microspines that are engulfed by a neuron generates efficient electrical coupling and allows detection of both action potentials and subthreshold synaptic potentials with a signal-to-noise ratio similar to that of conventional intracellular recordings.

    • Aviad Hai
    • , Joseph Shappir
    •  & Micha E Spira

  • Brief Communication |

    Single-molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer (smFRET) is applied in live cells and reveals the conformational changes of individual SNARE proteins upon entering a SNARE complex.

    • John J Sakon
    •  & Keith R Weninger

  • Article |

    Microwestern arrays combine the advantages of scalability of reverse phase protein arrays and the information content of western blotting for analyzing protein abundance and modification state with high sensitivity and throughput. The method is demonstrated for analyzing phosphorylation state changes in the EGF receptor signaling network using Bayesian network modeling.

    • Mark F Ciaccio
    • , Joel P Wagner
    •  & Richard B Jones

  • Brief Communication |

    By using a reverse transcriptase for the bridge-amplification step on the Illumina Genome Analyzer, RNA conversion to cDNA and sequencing take place directly in the flowcell and yield highly accurate strand-specific sequences.

    • Lira Mamanova
    • , Robert M Andrews
    •  & Daniel J Turner

  • Brief Communication |

    Lifetime screening of fluorescent protein variants by fluorescent lifetime imaging microscopy of bacterial colonies identifies bright, high-quantum-yield fluorescent protein variants including a cyan fluorescent protein named mTurquoise that is 1.5-fold brighter than mCerulean and has a mono-exponential fluorescence decay.

    • Joachim Goedhart
    • , Laura van Weeren
    •  & Theodorus W J Gadella Jr

  • Brief Communication |

    Short sequence reads are grouped based on the long genomic fragments from which they derive, enabling efficient local assembly of the long fragments and therefore accurate de novo genome assembly and metagenome sequencing.

    • Joseph B Hiatt
    • , Rupali P Patwardhan
    •  & Jay Shendure

  • Research Highlights |

    Screening reveals a chemical activator that triggers apoptosis by locking inactive but dynamic proenzymes into a more active state, suggesting a promising strategy for targeting proteases.

    • Michael Eisenstein

  • Research Highlights |

    A new technique finds genomic subpopulations to indicate cancer progression.

    • Monya Baker

  • News & Views |

    Cardiomyocytes can be sorted to high purity upon staining them with a dye that labels mitochondria. This permits the preparation of pure populations of cardiomyocytes differentiated from stem cells.

    • Christine Mummery

  • Research Highlights |

    A miniature head-mounted two-photon microscope small enough for a rat to carry allows researchers to visualize neuronal signaling while the animal freely interacts with its environment.

    • Daniel Evanko

  • This Month |

    Supercharged SRM: synthetic peptides bring high-throughput assays to targeted proteomics.

    • Monya Baker

  • Technology Feature |

    Rapid progress with induced pluripotent stem cells is bringing scientists closer to understanding their strengths and weaknesses as embryonic stem cell stand-ins.

    • Michael Eisenstein

  • News Feature |

    Now that the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells is becoming routine, researchers can get on to the more exciting prospect of using the cells to make discoveries in disease and basic biology. Monya Baker reports.

    • Monya Baker

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