Nature Biotechnology

Volume 29 Issue 10, October 2011

Confocal (main image) and RESOLFT (inset) images of keratin labeled with the fluorescent protein Dreiklang in PtK2 cells. Jakobs and colleagues demonstrate the superiority of Dreiklang, a photoswitchable variant of YFP with three distinct wavelengths for imaging and turning the protein on and off, for resolving structures in living cells (p 942). Credit: Marina Corral, based on images and concept from Stefan Jakobs.

Volume 29 Issue 10

Editorial

Enlightened engineering

Optogenetics—until now primarily a tool for asking questions in basic research—is starting to spur efforts oriented toward biomedical applications.

Editorial 13 Oct 2011

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News

Seattle Genetics rare cancer drug sails through accelerated approval

Laura DeFrancesco
News 13 Oct 2011
HIV drugs made in tobacco

Jeffrey L Fox
News 13 Oct 2011
Engineered T-cell therapy shows efficacy in blood cancer

Simon Frantz
News 13 Oct 2011
9,000 tumors for stratified medicine

Susan Aldridge
News 13 Oct 2011
Chinese inventors catch up

Nuala Moran
News 13 Oct 2011
ATM cash for biotechs

Brian Orelli
News 13 Oct 2011
Pertuzumab to bolster Roche/Genentech's breast cancer franchise?

Cormac Sheridan
News 13 Oct 2011
Gilead donates patents for generics

Simon Frantz
News 13 Oct 2011
South Korea's stem cell approval

Heiko Yang
News 13 Oct 2011

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Data Page

Drug pipeline: Q311

Wayne Peng
Data Page 13 Oct 2011

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News Feature

Attacks on asthma

The current standard of care for asthma leaves large numbers of sufferers at risk for severe exacerbations and even death. But emerging targeted therapies that may provide better treatment options also face obstacles. Sarah Webb reports.

Sarah Webb
News Feature 13 Oct 2011

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Bioentrepreneur

Headwinds into opportunity

Numerous challenges face any emerging company developing a biopharmaceutical. How you anticipate hurdles, plan for contingencies and communicate with stakeholders will play a big part in determining your success.

Prabhavathi Fernandes
Bioentrepreneur 18 Aug 2011

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Correspondence

A methodological framework to enhance the clinical success of cancer immunotherapy

Axel Hoos
Cedrik M Britten
Jill O'Donnell-Tormey
Correspondence 13 Oct 2011
Pharmacogenetics and the immunogenicity of protein therapeutics

Chen Yanover
Nisha Jain
Zuben E Sauna
Correspondence 13 Oct 2011
Wanted: bioprospecting consultants

Kazuo N Watanabe
Guat Hong Teh
Correspondence 13 Oct 2011

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Patents

Evergreening: a common practice to protect new drugs

The common strategy of evergreening using patents and other exclusivity periods likely contributes to the total incentives that justify a pharmaceutical company's investment in a new drug.

Kate S Gaudry
Patents 13 Oct 2011
Recent patent applications in drug screening

Patents 13 Oct 2011

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News & Views

New fluorescent probes for super-resolution imaging

Fatigue-resistant, photoswitchable fluorescent proteins facilitate sub-diffraction-limit imaging of living cells with low light intensity.

Joshua C Vaughan
Xiaowei Zhuang
News & Views 13 Oct 2011
Tracking down the human myelinating cell

A new strategy for isolating oligodendrocyte progenitor cells from the human brain may advance the goal of therapeutic remyelination.

Robert H Miller
Paul J Tesar
News & Views 13 Oct 2011
RNA lights up

A new method to genetically tag RNA for fluorescence imaging in live cells simplifies imaging of cellular RNAs.

John S Mattick
Michael B Clark
News & Views 13 Oct 2011

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Research Highlights

Cancer stem cells predict patient survival

Markus Elsner
Research Highlights 13 Oct 2011
FcγRIIb engagement kills tumors

Peter Hare
Research Highlights 13 Oct 2011
Arming yeast for synthetic biology

Craig Mak
Research Highlights 13 Oct 2011
Broad-spectrum antiviral strategy

Peter Hare
Research Highlights 13 Oct 2011
Motor neurons to order

Kathy Aschheim
Research Highlights 13 Oct 2011

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Analysis

Extracting a cellular hierarchy from high-dimensional cytometry data with SPADE

New instruments can measure the presence of >30 molecular markers for massive numbers of single cells, but data analysis algorithms have lagged behind. Qiu et al. describe an approach called SPADE for recovering cellular hierarchies from mass or flow cytometry data.

Peng Qiu
Erin F Simonds
Sylvia K Plevritis

Collection:

Computational Biology
Analysis 02 Oct 2011

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Review Article

Direct lineage conversions: unnatural but useful?

Thomas Vierbuchen
Marius Wernig
Review Article 12 Oct 2011

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Analysis

Performance comparison of exome DNA sequencing technologies

Capturing and sequencing only the coding regions of the human genome leverages resources in the pursuit of rare disease-causing mutations. Clark et al. compare the performance of three leading exome-capture methods and their advantages over whole-genome sequencing.

Michael J Clark
Rui Chen
Michael Snyder
Analysis 25 Sept 2011

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Article

Efficient de novo assembly of single-cell bacterial genomes from short-read data sets

DNA can be amplified and sequenced from a single cell, but unevenness of the sequence coverage complicates efforts to assemble a high-quality genome. Chitsaz et al. devise an algorithm to address this problem and apply it to assemble a genome draft of an uncultured single-cell marine organism from one lane of Illumina sequence data.

Hamidreza Chitsaz
Joyclyn L Yee-Greenbaum
Roger S Lasken
Article 18 Sept 2011
Comparative genomic analysis of the thermophilic biomass-degrading fungi Myceliophthora thermophila and Thielavia terrestris

Thermostable enzymes are used for a range of industrial processes, including biofuel production. Berka et al. report the genome sequences of two thermophilic eukaryotic fungi with enzymes that operate at the elevated temperatures needed to digest biomass and prepare many biochemicals.

Randy M Berka
Igor V Grigoriev
Adrian Tsang
Article 02 Oct 2011
Tracking single hematopoietic stem cells in vivo using high-throughput sequencing in conjunction with viral genetic barcoding

Heterogeneity within populations of stem cells, cancer cells or other cell types of interest presents a formidable barrier to analysis. Lu et al. use viral barcoding and high-throughput sequencing to track the differentiation of single hematopoietic stem cells in vivo.

Rong Lu
Norma F Neff
Irving L Weissman
Article 02 Oct 2011
CD140a identifies a population of highly myelinogenic, migration-competent and efficiently engrafting human oligodendrocyte progenitor cells

Oligodendrocyte progenitors capable of myelination in myelin-deficient mice have been isolated from human fetal brain cells, but at low purity. Sim et al. show that sorting based on PDGFRα expression yields a purer population of myelinogenic cells free of neuronal and committed astrocyte cells.

Fraser J Sim
Crystal R McClain
Steven A Goldman
Article 25 Sept 2011
A reversibly photoswitchable GFP-like protein with fluorescence excitation decoupled from switching

Brakemann et al. present a reversibly photoswitchable fluorescent protein, called Dreiklang, that can be turned on and off at wavelengths distinct from those used for imaging. They show that the protein is advantageous for studying protein dynamics in living cells and for super-resolution imaging.

Tanja Brakemann
Andre C Stiel
Stefan Jakobs
Article 11 Sept 2011

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Careers and Recruitment

A global need for women's biotech leadership

Increasing women's participation in leadership of biotech policy making, funding, research and implementation will strengthen the race to solve global problems.

Laurel Smith-Doerr
Gintare Kemekliene
Fiona Murray
Careers and Recruitment 13 Oct 2011
People

Careers and Recruitment 13 Oct 2011

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In this issue

In This Issue 13 Oct 2011

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