Volume 18 Issue 4, April 2021

How computational neuroanatomy, vintage gear and fado fit together.

Two independent studies describe the reproduction of early events in cardiac development in vitro.

In situ long-read sequencing combined with expansion microscopy enables precise views of transcriptomes in intact biological systems.

Germanium nanoparticles enable optical trapping at high spatiotemporal resolution.

The split-pool barcoding strategy has been extended to single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) of microbes.

KIN-CLIP allows determination of binding and dissociation kinetics of RNA-binding proteins in cells.

Immune cells can transform themselves with plasticity that cancer labs seek to harness.

Souza et al. present the latest release of the popular and widely used force field for near-atomistic coarse-grained biomolecular simulations.

Single-molecule FRET is making stepwise progress toward the realization of its full potential: becoming the reference technique to monitor protein structural dynamics in live cells.

This Perspective describes advances that have enabled robust directed evolution in mammalian cells. These approaches are poised to improve the development of new generations of tools to probe or modulate mammalian biology.

This Perspective describes technological advances for imaging-based screening of diverse cellular phenotypes.

An updated version of DIAMOND uses improved algorithmic procedures and a customized high-performance computing framework to make seemingly prohibitive large-scale protein sequence alignments feasible.

ROSE-Z achieves axial interference through an asymmetrical optical scheme, yielding 2 nm axial localization precision with ~3,000 photons and a single objective, which offers improved multicolor three-dimensional localization microscopy for cellular structures.

SNT is a toolbox neuronal morphometry and connectomics and provides various analysis, visualization, quantification and modeling tools.

Bolaños et al. present a realistic three-dimensional virtual mouse model that can be animated and that facilitates the training of pose estimation algorithms.

Martini 3.0 is an updated and reparametrized force field for coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations with new bead types and an expanded ability to model molecular packing and interactions.

A deep-learning-guided approach enables protein engineering using only a small number (‘low N’) of functionally characterized variants of target proteins.

A suite of generally applicable methods and tools, developed to enable single-molecule FRET-based studies of transmembrane proteins diffusing in the cell membrane of living cells, was used to study the oligomerization and dynamics of GPCRs.

Point-scanning super-resolution imaging uses deep learning to supersample undersampled images and enable time-lapse imaging of subcellular events. An accompanying ‘crappifier’ rapidly generates quality training data for robust performance.

The mini-mScope is a miniature microscope that can image neural activity at the mesoscale in most of the dorsal cortex of freely behaving mice.