Articles in 2009

Independent two-color, two-photon uncaging of glutamate and GABA allows autonomous activation and inhibition of neuronal action potentials in brain slices with subcellular resolution.

A chronically implanted biocompatible electrochemical microsensor allows long-term recording of subsecond dopamine dynamics in vivo. The microsensor can reliably detect behaviorally evoked dopamine release from dopamine neurons in the brain over a period of months in rats.

Microscope imaging performance can be seriously degraded by optical inhomogeneities in biological samples. An adaptive optics approach using a spatial light modulator to divide the illumination wavefront into individually controllable subregions recovers near-diffraction–limited two-photon imaging performance in brain tissue.

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.

The ability to return mature body cells to a pluripotent state has wide-ranging potential as a tool for discovery in both disease and basic biology.

The field of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) will be subject to a wide range of laws and research ethics policies, many of which exist as a result of the controversies associated with research on human embryonic stem cells. Understanding this potentially complex regulatory environment will help iPSC research move forward and will inform future policy.

The discovery that it is possible to render somatic cells pluripotent by the exogenous expression of a set of transcription factors provides an experimental model for studying the molecular nature of cellular identity.

Now that the generation of induced pluripotent stem cells is becoming routine, researchers can get on to the more exciting prospect of using the cells to make discoveries in disease and basic biology. Monya Baker reports.

iPS cell technology makes patient- and disease-specific human cells widely available. While technical challenges still remain, the use of these tools will greatly expand our understanding of human disease.

A brief overview of methods for reprogramming to induced pluripotency and of the properties of induced pluripotent stem cells.

A mouse strain in which cellular reprogramming factors are expressed from a defined genomic locus is presented. It will enable studies of reprogramming in multiple cell types as well as facilitate comparisons between induced pluripotent stem cells and embryonic stem cells. Also in this issue, a paper by Carey et al. presents related tools.

Mouse strains in which three or four cellular reprogramming factors are expressed from a defined genomic locus are presented. They will enable studies of reprogramming in multiple cell types as well as facilitate comparisons between induced pluripotent stem cells and embryonic stem cells. Also in this issue, a paper from Stadtfeld et al. presents related tools.

By combining a protein complementation assay with a transcriptional reporter assay based on short expressed oligonucleotide tags (EXTs), the authors monitor tyrosine kinase receptor dimerization in conjunction with effector recruitment and downstream signaling.