Perspectives in 2013

This Perspective describes statistical measures commonly used to quantify whether nodes in biological networks have similar interaction profiles and discusses which indices are best suited for specific tasks.

This Perspective describes current and prospective advances in genome engineering made possible with the CRISPR-Cas9 system.

International Cancer Genome Consortium members review and recommend computational approaches for identifying mutations that drive cancer progression from among the many sequence variants present in tumor genomes.

With potential relevance for brain-mapping work, hydrogel-based structures can now be built from within biological tissue to allow subsequent removal of lipids without mechanical disassembly of the tissue. This process creates a tissue-hydrogel hybrid that is physically stable, that preserves fine structure, proteins and nucleic acids, and that is permeable to both visible-spectrum photons and exogenous macromolecules. Here we highlight relevant challenges and opportunities of this approach, especially with regard to integration with complementary methodologies for brain-mapping studies.

Neuronal networks are high-dimensional graphs that are packed into three-dimensional nervous tissue at extremely high density. Comprehensively mapping these networks is therefore a major challenge. Although recent developments in volume electron microscopy imaging have made data acquisition feasible for circuits comprising a few hundreds to a few thousands of neurons, data analysis is massively lagging behind. The aim of this Perspective is to summarize and quantify the challenges for data analysis in cellular-resolution connectomics and describe current solutions involving online crowd-sourcing and machine-learning approaches.

The role of targeted mass spectrometry technology in the field of clinical proteomics is discussed in this Perspective.