Volume 17 Issue 9, September 2020

A new way to see actin in action, hearing as others don’t, and saved by the guitar.

“I have no idea what’s awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.” ―Albert Camus, The Plague

BRICseq provides access to brain-wide connectivity and can be combined with functional and transcriptomic studies for a comprehensive view of neuronal circuitry.

Addition of a second constriction to CsgG-family nanopores improves the accuracy of homopolymer sequencing.

Stem-cell-derived organoids reproduce the in vivo secretory and functional properties of the choroid plexus.

Stdpopsim facilitates realistic population genetics simulations with a catalog of widely used models.

A protein degradation platform enables the targeted depletion of extracellular and membrane-bound proteins.

With advanced approaches to sample preparation and data analysis, scientists doing cryo-EM are starting to infer molecular movements from samples that are, literally, frozen.

This Review focuses on protease-based tools for sensing and controlling protein function in cell biology.

A spraying-mixing approach for preparing cryo-EM grids using the Spotiton robot allows time-resolved observations of short-lived biomolecular states.

Repository-scale reanalysis of public mass spectrometry-based metabolomics data is facilitated by the Reanalysis of Data User (ReDU) interface, a system that uses consistent formatting and controlled vocabularies for metadata capture.

Feature-based molecular networking allows the generation of molecular networks for mass spectrometry data that can recognize isomers, incorporate relative quantification and integrate ion mobility data.

A systematic evaluation shows that excitation intensity has a dramatic impact on image quality in localization microscopy and reveals the benefits of lower excitation intensity for improved labeling efficiency and localization precision.

Stimulated Brillouin scattering microscopy overcomes the trade-off between acquisition speed and spectral resolution in spontaneous Brillouin scattering microscopy and allows visualization of elasticity and viscosity, as shown in C. elegans.

Genetically encoded fluorescent-protein-tagged actin nanobodies fused to organelle membrane-targeting sequences enables high-resolution imaging of transient organelle–actin contact sites in live cells.

A method based on maximum likelihood density modification, adapted from X-ray crystallography, improves cryo-EM maps.

Chemically inducible trimerization tools based on split FRB or FKBP with full-length FKBP or FRB, respectively, expand the chemogenetics toolbox. Their efficiency and fast kinetics enable new types of protein manipulation in live cells.

Genetically encoded cysteine-rich tags enable formation of gold nanoparticles in situ for single-molecule imaging of individual proteins in the context of cellular ultrastructure in bacterial, yeast and mammalian cells.