Method to Watch

Tools to manipulate murine genes on a genome-wide scale and to phenotype their effects in animals are maturing.

Sequencing a haploid genome and understanding the impact of its variants requires technical and computational improvements.

Next-generation sequencing is broadening the application of genetic and genomic studies to the panoply of life.

Accurate methods for RNA-structure determination are being developed.

The payoffs for efficient cargo delivery into living cells make the development of better methods worthwhile.

Targeted analysis of proteins on a broad scale with mass spectrometry is becoming a reality.

The use of adaptive optics to correct light distortions promises to greatly improve the imaging quality of thick biological tissues.

High-speed fluorescence imaging in all three dimensions at nanometer resolution will resolve, in finer detail, the workings of the living cell.

In 2011, we will see the arrival of new and improved sequencing technologies.

Genome-engineering tools with improved design and efficiency will become widely used.

X-ray free-electron lasers may enable single-molecule structure determination.

The application of systems approaches to human disease will continue to expand.

The ability to study single cells will permit a better understanding of cellular heterogeneity.

Will some single molecule sequencing strategies be able to deliver on the promise of direct methyl cytosine sequencing?

Automated methods to score phenotypes in model organisms continue to develop and will permit previously inaccessible areas of biology to be probed.

Technology for sensitively and reproducibly detecting targeted proteins by mass spectrometry picks up speed.

Refinements in methods to uncover the higher-order structure of the genome will allow functional insight into genomic architecture at high resolution.

Will new methods and an emerging understanding of the minimal requirements for cellular life be sufficient to construct a synthetic organism?

New methods to coax signals from unlabeled biological molecules may finally fulfill the promise of practical label-free microscopy with molecular specificity.

Methodological developments are opening the functioning brain to cellular-level investigation using light.