Perspectives in 2016

Modern biological research increasingly relies on image data as a primary source of information in unraveling the cellular and molecular mechanisms of life. The quantity and complexity of the data generated by state-of-the-art microscopes preclude visual or manual analysis and require advanced computational methods to fully explore the wealth of information. In addition to making bioimage analysis more efficient, objective, and reproducible, the use of computers improves the accuracy and sensitivity of the analyses and helps to reveal subtleties that may be unnoticeable to the human eye. Many methods and software tools have already been developed to this end, but there is still a long way to go before biologists can blindly trust automated measurements. Here, we summarize the current state of the art in bioimage analysis and provide a perspective on likely future developments.

The experimental and computational tools that enable continuous imaging of single cells for days and weeks have advanced rapidly in recent years, and solutions to current limitations are on the horizon.

GNPS is an open-access community-curated analysis platform for sharing natural product mass spectrometry data that enables continuous, automatic reanalysis of deposited 'living' data sets.

A long-held goal in sequencing has been to use a voltage-biased nanoscale pore in a membrane to measure the passage of a linear, single-stranded (ss) DNA or RNA molecule through that pore. With the development of enzyme-based methods that ratchet polynucleotides through the nanopore, nucleobase-by-nucleobase, measurements of changes in the current through the pore can now be decoded into a DNA sequence using an algorithm. In this Historical Perspective, we describe the key steps in nanopore strand-sequencing, from its earliest conceptualization more than 25 years ago to its recent commercialization and application.

The unprecedented number of fatalities in the PROPATRIA clinical trial using probiotics to treat patients with acute pancreatitis cast a shadow over the field. Bongaerts et al. provide rationales for the trial's high mortality rate and outline situations in which probiotic therapy may still be appropriate for this disease.