News & Comment

Peering into live cells and tissues with genetically encoded near-infrared probes requires addressing a number of hurdles.

Cell lines are better. Mice are better. Beyond disagreement about model systems and even passionate discord at times, new strategies help to explore the middle ground so models might better approximate human biology.

Some researchers run and hide from the task of authenticating cell lines. A few simple steps save time and money.

Tumors impart hints at what drives their progression. Parsing those signals takes old and new approaches.

Careful strategizing helps make PCR sensitive enough for the most challenging experiments.

Identifying functional regions in genomes takes scientists beyond protein-coding regions and into stretches formerly known as genomic deserts.

A variety of liquid-handling methods are available for labs large and small. Selecting an approach is not just a matter of budget.

Imaging with better than 200-nanometer resolution brings new subcellular-scale details into focus. Practitioners share how they weigh trade-offs in speed, resolution and phototoxicity.

Researchers scale up how to crowdsource the mapping of neural circuits. These projects entice crowds by tapping into their spirit of play.

Cloud computing can help busy genomics labs. But researchers will want to be cautious shoppers as they scan the skies for the cloud best suited to their needs.

As complements to antibodies, new reagents to target proteins invite broad types of experiments.

As new research applications for antibody-based assays emerge, the quest for quality intensifies in a crowded marketplace.

Being sure is good; being uncertain is not necessarily bad. Research teams are working to render uncertainty visual.

Progress in genomics offers researchers many new reasons to expand the universe of organisms they study.

With strategies for reproducibility and quality control, scientists seek to cultivate better practices in quantitative PCR experiments.

Paving roads through data mountains, consortia are developing workflows and tools for widespread use.

Mass spectrometrists travel top down, middle down and bottom up to study post-translational modifications on proteins and their biological functions.

By building engineered microenvironments, scientists probe the many talents of stem cells.

Researchers are injecting ever more conscious design into their bioengineering workflow.

Instruments maximize the yield in high-content single-cell imaging, which calls for carefully planned experiments and data analysis.