In this issue, we are delighted to launch a new regular feature: the Creature Column.

Tardigrades are everywhere. They’re tiny — usually under a millimeter long — and they’re mostly transparent, so they’re easy to miss. But you probably walk by them every day. We’ve been grooming them as emerging models for studying how body forms evolve and how biological materials can survive extreme conditions.

The study of human–animal chimeras is fraught with technical and ethical challenges. In this Comment, we discuss the importance and future of human–monkey chimera research within the context of current scientific and regulatory obstacles.

Expeditions are delivering data wealth about our planet’s oceans, including its microbes. Some labs are now diving deep into the ocean virome.

The DAQ score assesses the consistency of amino acid assignment in protein structure models with local density from cryo-EM maps. The method complements existing quality metrics and is a versatile tool for highlighting problematic regions of model structures.

Using a sequence-based deep neural network, scBasset facilitates various tasks of single-cell ATAC-seq analysis in a unified framework.

Sprod accurately denoises spatially resolved transcriptomics data and improves downstream analysis results.

Functional ultrasound localization microscopy monitors cerebrovascular blood flow by detecting the flow of injected microbubbles, providing access to brain activity at high spatiotemporal resolution.

PROBER offers a method to identify proteins associated with the DNA sequence of interest and quantify differential binding caused by sequence variants in living cells.

Energy transfer between fluorophores is shown to impede SMLM at sub-10-nm spatial resolution. Time-resolved detection and photoswitching fingerprinting analysis are used to determine the number and separation of closely spaced fluorophores.

VASA-seq offers a single cell sequencing tool for capturing full-length coverage of coding sequences and supplementing non-coding RNA molecules.

Researchers have discovered two naturally occurring channelrhodopsins for potassium ion transport that can be used in optogenetic applications.

Stem cell-derived endothelial cell subtypes enable study of viral tropism.

To diversify science, some labs open summer doors wide to reach out to under-represented groups.

In this issue, we are delighted to launch a new regular feature: the Creature Column.

Imputing missing parental genotypes sharpens estimates of direct genetic effects.