Volume 11 Issue 2, February 2014

Finding ways to navigate the reactions of life and herd tigers are all part of her workday.

Creating a simple yet effective plot requires an understanding of data and tasks.

Use box plots to illustrate the spread and differences of samples.

Two groups demonstrate the use of the CRISPR-Cas9 system for genetic screens in human cells.

Cryo-electron tomography, single-particle analysis and cross-linking mass spectroscopy join forces to solve the nuclear pore scaffold puzzle.

Chromatin immunoprecipitation of transcription factors tagged for degradation reveals how protein turnover regulates transcription.

Cre-recombinase mouse driver lines provide tools for the functional dissection of neuronal circuits.

A set of 16 TetR proteins specific for their synthetic promoters will allow the construction of complex genetic circuits.

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

A new family of genetically encoded ratiometric calcium indicators optimized for imaging of calcium signals in vivo exhibits near-linear fluorescence dynamics while minimizing artifacts caused by movement.

Optofluidic biolasers are emerging as a highly sensitive way to measure changes in biological molecules. Biolasers, which incorporate biological material into the gain medium and contain an optical cavity in a fluidic environment, take advantage of the amplification that occurs during laser generation to quantify tiny changes in biological processes in the gain medium. This Perspective describes the principle of the optofluidic biolaser, reviews recent progress and provides outlooks on potential applications and directions for developing this enabling technology.

This Analysis reports the development and assessment of 645 multiple reaction monitoring (MRM) mass spectrometry assays to quantify 319 targeted human breast cancer proteins. The results of this pilot project coordinated among three individual groups suggest that an organized international effort to generate MRM assays to the human proteome will be possible.

A system using the human glycine receptor expressed in Xenopus oocytes allows characterization of the photoactivation efficiency of photoactivatable and photoconvertible fluorescent proteins at the single-molecule level, providing crucial data for using these probes for quantitative super-resolution microscopy.

With an optimized protocol and unique molecular identifiers (UMIs) to tag individual transcripts, the mRNA complement of a single cell can be quantified on an absolute scale with almost no amplification bias.

A data-independent acquisition (DIA) mass spectrometry approach, ultradefinition (UD)MS^E, offers high reproducibility and improved proteome coverage over alternative DIA and data-dependent acquisition workflows.

EC-BLAST is a Web-based tool allowing quantitative similarity searches between enzymes at the levels of bond-change, reaction-center or reaction-structure similarity. The tool may help improve the annotation of enzyme function.

A collection of improved FRET-based calcium biosensors, called Twitch sensors, is described. Twitches have a reduced number of calcium binding sites per sensor and display high sensitivity in in vivo imaging experiments in mouse brain and lymph node.

Microscopic oil droplets with defined mechanical properties are used to measure forces exerted within living tissue.

A noninvasive method is reported for the isolation and profiling of the transcriptome from a single cell in the context of intact tissue.

This paper describes a method for statistical inference of unobserved molecular states from single-cell time-lapse data.

A method to map transcription factor binding across the genome, at high resolution and without cross-linking.