Editorials

Metagenomics sprang from advances in sequencing technology, and continued improvements are providing data in quantities unimaginable a few years ago. But without concerted efforts, the amount of data will quickly outpace the ability of scientists to analyze it.

We are now accepting nominations and collecting votes for the Method of the Year 2009.

Computational biologists are often tempted to avoid providing a named software implementation of their new algorithm, but resisting this temptation helps avoid difficulties later on and benefits the wider community of biologists.

Though somewhat rare, there are a few good fiction books to be found with refreshingly realistic biologists as central characters in laboratory settings.

Methods to study the behavior of Drosophila sp. in the context of a group may deepen our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying social behavior.

Nature Methods follows in the footsteps of Nature by ushering in an Online Methods section, fully integrated with the paper, for all original research articles.

The rise of 'omics' methods and data-driven research presents new possibilities for discovery but also stimulates disagreement over how science should be conducted and even how it should be defined.

The increasing impact of science on society calls for improved communication between scientists and the public via dedicated science media centers as well as nontraditional personal blogs.

The development of large-scale centralized biobanks raises the stakes in a familiar conversation on ethics in medical research and poses unique challenges to lawmakers that will require informed discussions between scientists and the public.

The maturation of large-scale protein-protein interaction methodologies calls for improved methods to assess performance and data quality.

With its tremendous potential for understanding cellular biology now poised to become a reality, super-resolution fluorescence microscopy is our choice for Method of the Year.

Sequencing technology is now advanced enough to decode individual human genomes. Will it prove to be better than existing methods for discovering the genetic basis of human phenotypic variation?

The fourth anniversary of Nature Methods' arrival on the publishing scene and a change in leadership offer an opportunity for reflection and editorial fine-tuning.

A feasibility study for the systematic generation of affinity reagents to human proteins provides an opportunity to test the merits of recombinant affinity reagents.

You can now nominate candidates and vote online to help select the Method of the Year 2008.

A constant influx of new methods keeps research on microRNA biology fast-paced and can provide divergent vantage points.

The use of organized competition to evaluate algorithm performance would be very beneficial for small communities, not just large ones.

With access to high-throughput technologies, researchers struggle to store their raw data. Many just give up.

Biologists are increasingly interested in single-molecule approaches. In this issue, a Focus provides a biologist's guide to this relatively new field, and two papers present advances in nanoscale visualization.

Presenting at a conference is a unique opportunity to broadly communicate your work. Here are ten suggestions to make the most of it.