News & Views

In this issue a review and a protocol describe advances in applying amperometry to biology. Here we provide an overview of amperometry's origins and how it is used to examine the basics of exocytosis.

With the advent of microfluidics technology and the development of a user-friendly device, studying high-density colonies of microorganisms in controlled chemostatic conditions now becomes a reality.

Targeted genomic insertion will improve the qualitative and quantitative functional comparison of similar transgenes and provide suitable integration points for transgenes of applied interest.

Solution polymers such as dendrimers promise to provide valuable new tools for proteomics researchers using mass spectrometry (MS) to probe protein modifications.

The nonphototoxic nature of GFP makes it an excellent imaging probe but a poor tool for techniques that rely on generation of toxic radicals such as chromophore-assisted light inactivation (CALI). Multiphoton excitation helps overcome these limitations.

A carefully thought out method of harvesting and arraying tissue samples into blocks provides a simple but powerful way of reliably producing extremely large tissue microarrays using commonly available laboratory equipment.

An innovative genetic screen yields new insights into kinase active site structure, expanding the number of enzymes from this family addressable with chemical tools.

A new version of the reverse two-hybrid strategy is now available that uses mammalian cells and the reconstitution of the JAK/STAT pathway. This should broaden substantially the possibilities of identifying reagents that specifically dissociate protein-protein interactions.

Mass spectrometry is reaching new heights monitoring changes in protein folding that occur as a result of a phage infection that commandeers the host's protein-folding machinery.

Since the introduction of microarray technology into the biologist's arsenal, there have been concerns about the reproducibility of experimental results obtained using different microarray platforms. In this issue, three articles address this point, and show that with carefully designed and controlled experiments using standardized protocols and data analyses, reproducibility across platforms is much better than previously shown.

New fluorescent peptide–based reporters provide a means for following kinase activity in crude cell extracts.

Validation and comparison of previously unknown microRNA genes in related herpesviruses yielded several surprises, most notably in regard to viral evolution and microRNA biogenesis. An explosion of literature has recently appeared describing the identification and mechanism of action of microRNAs (miRNAs)—small RNA regulators of gene expression in plant and animal cells.

Introducing inhibitors of bone morphogenic proteins along with basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) into culture medium for human embryonic stem (ES) cells facilitates long-term maintenance of these cells in the pluripotent state, coming one step closer to the goal of a fully defined system for human ES cell (hESC) culture free of animal products.

Two different but complementary resonance energy transfer techniques present researchers with new tools to visualize ligand-mediated activation of G protein–coupled receptors in living cells.

A new method for genome-wide characterization of the 5′ and 3′ ends of transcripts promises to improve gene discovery and annotation.

An imaging method termed LAMP, based on a newly described photo-activatable fluorophore, promises to illuminate how gap junctions mediate intercellular coupling.

A remarkably suitable fluorescent tag incorporated into lipids through some clever chemistry produces fluorescent lipids that are excellent mimics of their native counterparts.

Intein-dependent, ultrasensitive, amplified detection of... anything

Beyond protein destruction: a new real-time assay to measure dynamic changes in ubiquitination promises to highlight the many other roles of this critical protein modification.

With the sequencing of the human genome, millions of single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs, have been discovered and can be used as markers to identify genes contributing to common human diseases. Two large sets of SNPs have now been organized in panels for high-throughput genotyping.