Reviews & Analysis

Key to life, water is an often overlooked or over-simplified factor in materials and biology. In this perspective the importance of water in biomaterials is discussed as well as the need to more carefully consider water’s role in every aspect of a biomaterial’s function.

Acoustic techniques are moving towards the clinic. Here the authors highlight recent developments in the areas of acoustic mechanobiology, point-of-care diagnostics, in vivo manipulation and tissues engineering, and provide their thoughts on the current challenges and directions for future work.

In this review, the authors look at how recent progress in single-cell transcriptomics complement and enrich the classical, largely morphological, portraits of fibroblasts. The detailed molecular information now available provides new insights into fibroblast identity, heterogeneity and function.

Building small-scale tools for biology research eliminates the need for time-consuming methods and enables novel experimental paradigms. Here, the authors discuss microfluidics' potential for manipulating or stimulating model organisms and identify barriers to making these tools accessible.

Precision oncology is important for patient treatment. Here the authors review the current applications of microfluidic systems to cancer precision medicine, and discuss the issues that must be addressed prior to getting these technologies into the clinic.

Both alternative splicing and autophagy are core cell biological processes, but where they intersect has received little attention. Here, the authors reflect on recent connections identified between these pathways and consider their impact on human disease.

Deep learning has enabled advances in understanding biology. In this review, the authors outline advances, and limitations of deep learning in five broad areas and the future challenges for the biosciences.

In this Review, the authors discuss recent technological and neuroscientific advances in human body augmentation. They construct a movement augmentation taxonomy, discuss how it is achieved, and propose a vision for the field.

Large scale sustainable energy storage by water splitting benefits from performing the oxygen evolution reaction under a variety of conditions. Here, the authors discuss self-healing catalysis as a new tool in the design of stable and functionally active catalysts in acidic to basic solutions, and a variety of water sources

Transition-metal-catalyzed C–H arylations are an effective tool for the construction of biaryl motifs in an efficient and selective manner. Here the authors provide an overview of the state-of-the-art of the field and perspectives on emerging directions toward increased sustainability.

A grand challenge in robotics is realising intelligent agents capable of autonomous interaction with the environment. In this Perspective, the authors discuss the potential, challenges and future direction of research aimed at demonstrating embodied intelligent robotics via neuromorphic technology.

Animal ecologists are increasingly limited by constraints in data processing. Here, Tuia and colleagues discuss how collaboration between ecologists and data scientists can harness machine learning to capitalize on the data generated from technological advances and lead to novel modeling approaches.

Many biological processes require changes in the physical properties of cells and their surroundings. Here, Lenne and Trivedi discuss recent findings in biological systems in terms of phase transitions in inert physical systems from both theoretical and experimental perspectives.

Synthetic DNA is the basis for promising technologies in data storage, barcoding, computing 62 and sercurity. In this review, the authors provide an overview of the field and its future.

The reasons for concern framework are an effective visualisation of climate change related risks. Here, the authors propose a new framework by which different levels of uncertainty can be included into this aggregated assessment in order to ensure a transparent communication of risks.

Cooperation is vulnerable to cheating, and both cooperation and cheating may be especially common in viruses. Here, Leeks et al. place diverse examples of viral cooperation and cheating within an evolutionary framework, highlighting opportunities emerging from greater synthesis of virology and evolutionary theory.

New observations of volcanic and magmatic activity in Africa are changing our views of continental rifting and raising awareness of the associated hazards. However, despite a shift from crisis response to reducing disaster risks, limited capacity means mitigating geohazards remains challenging.

Cellular microbiology is a field that combines the study of infection and cell biology. In this review, we highlight emerging technologies and infection models that recently transformed our understanding of the infected cell and may inspire future medicine.

The high platinum loadings at the cathodes of proton exchange membrane fuel cells significantly contribute to the cost of these clean energy conversion devices. Here, the authors critically review and discuss recent developments on low- and non-platinum-based cathode catalysts and catalyst layers.

The number of publicly available proteomics datasets is growing rapidly, but a standardized approach for describing the associated metadata is lacking. Here, the authors propose a format and a software pipeline to present and validate metadata, and integrate them into ProteomeXchange repositories.