News & Comment

Volume electron microscopy (vEM) generates large 3D volumes of cells or tissues at nanoscale resolutions, enabling analyses of organelles in their cellular environment. Here, we provide examples of vEM in cell biology and discuss community efforts to develop standards in sample preparation and image acquisition for enhanced reproducibility and data reuse.

Despite the constant renewal of their components, cellular actin networks maintain their overall appearance, through a subtle balance of filament assembly and disassembly. This balance is key to the remodelling of cellular architecture. We discuss the significance of in vitro reconstitutions in deciphering the complexity of actin regulation.

Scientists must actively advocate for infrastructure development and funding of emerging research directions through collective efforts. In India, this has been crucial to help reverse the brain drain and enable equitable contributions to research and development at the global level.

In this piece, I share a personal encounter that underscores the glaring gaps in conference accessibility and challenges faced by disabled academics. I reveal historical biases and resistance to change and propose ways to transform conferences into more inclusive spaces, ensuring that all scientists can fully participate in the scientific discourse.

Eiji Hara is a professor at the Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka University, Japan. Eiji recalls the discovery of the basis for the irreversibility of cellular senescence, published in Nature Cell Biology in 2006.

Pietro De Camilli is a professor of neuroscience and of cell biology at Yale University, CT, as well as an investigator in the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Pietro discusses how his group’s 1999 Nature Cell Biology study linking amphiphysin with dynamin in clathrin-mediated endocytosis came to be.

Huck-Hui Ng is a senior group leader at the Genome Institute of Singapore of A*STAR. In this article, Ng revisits the 2009 Nature Cell Biology study in which he and his team described the role of Esrrb in somatic cell reprogramming.

Sarah Teichmann, head of cellular genetics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, reflects on the dawn of the single-cell genomics era and a pivotal decision that changed the course of her career.

Maria Antonietta (Antonella) De Matteis is a professor of biology at the University of Naples Federico II and leads the cell biology programme at the Telethon Institute of Genetics and Medicine in Pozzuoli, Italy. Antonella recalls the beginning of her research program on phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate (PI4P) at the Golgi, published in our pages in 1999 and 2004.

Danfeng Cai, an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, discusses her career path, including her work on the biomolecular condensation of YAP, and her excitement in her ongoing work on transcriptional condensates.

We celebrate the 25th anniversary of Nature Cell Biology with a series of commissioned content and an online collection of research articles across the journal’s broad scope. We look back at biological discoveries and discuss the roles of cell biologists in sustainability, our ongoing commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion, and goals for mentoring the next generation of cell scientists.

Women and gender minorities make defining contributions to science. Despite increased representation of women across the scientific career ladder, institutions routinely fail to support their career advancement or value their input. For an equitable and intersectional future faculty, definitions of excellence must evolve to better value women’s contributions.

With biomedical sciences quickly outgrowing many other application areas in terms of data generation, there is a unique opportunity for life sciences to become one of the greatest beneficiaries of research in machine learning and AI, and also inspire foundational developments in it.

Advances in technology dramatically accelerate biology research, with computation being a standout example. Typically, adapting a new technology follows stages from method creation, via proof-of-concept application to biology, to the development of usable tools. Creating user-friendly software to bridge computer science and biology is a crucial step, yielding high returns on investment and driving biological discoveries. However, we need dedicated resources and a shift in the academic reward system to harness the full potential of computer science in biology.

Climate change affects us all, and tackling it requires a concerted effort, but it isn’t always evident how cell biologists’ work can impact climate change. Here, I share my experience addressing climate change as a molecular cell biologist and educator.

Intellectual freedom for scientists, unconstrained by commercial interests and direct application, fuels unexpected discoveries. Curiosity-driven, basic science has yielded a deeper understanding of how life forms develop and function in their environment and has had wide implications for health and our planet. Investing in this is vital for scientific progress and is worth protecting in a democracy.

As cell biologists, we aim to better our communities, but basic research is costly: instruments require energy, experiments consume copious single-use materials. Though governments, international bodies and universities must work to reduce this carbon footprint, we find sustainable research can also be shaped by individual actions in the lab.

Cell death is an important biological process whose experimental detection and measurement can be difficult, especially when examining many conditions in parallel. The interpretation of cell death data is complicated by the diversity of measurement techniques and lack of standardized methods in the field. Here, we offer tips to help interpret cell death experiments.