An adaptive optics two-photon microscopy image of layer 4 of the primary somatosensory cortex

A composite image showing the barrel structure of the primary somatosensory cortex in mice delineated by thalamocortical boutons virally labeled with iGluSnFR3-v857.GPI (green) via injection into the ventral posteromedial thalamus. The vasculature is labeled via Cy5.5 in the bloodstream (magenta). The traces depict single-trial recordings of glutamate release at individual synapses in response to a 5-Hz train of air puffs to the vibrissae. See Yao et al.

A proximal tubule-enhanced kidney organoid derived from induced pluripotent stem cells

By more precisely recapitulating metanephric nephron progenitor specification, the authors generated induced pluripotent stem cell-derived kidney organoids with enhanced proximal tubule maturation and striking nephron spatial arrangement driven by a centralized source of WNT antagonism. See Vanslambrouck et al.

On-chip electrocatalytic microdevices

On-chip electrocatalytic microdevices allow high-precision electrocatalytic measurements at the individual nanomaterial level and offer unique perspectives that are not possible using conventional electrochemical methods. The cover shows an emerging electrochemical platform that specializes in investigating nanocatalysts/nanostructures at the microscopic level. See Wang et al.

Human neural culture on a chip recapitulates neuron–glia interactions.

The cover shows a 3D human neural culture on a chip, which allows the engagement of neurons with only disease-associated microglia, and their separation out from a heterogeneous microglia population. The image shows membrane-labeled microglia (red), GFP-labeled neuron and astrocyte (yellow), and immunostaining for astrocyte marker GFAP (blue). See Kang et al. p2838.

Acoustic tweezers for single-cell analysis.

Acoustic tweezers enable high-throughput, selective, precise and programmable manipulation of individual cells and particles, addressing interdisciplinary challenges in biology, materials science and soft-matter physics. See Yang et al.

Hepatocyte generation in adult liver during tissue homeostasis

Liver sections from hepatocyte-specific ProTracer mice are immunostained for tdTomato (green pseudo-color) and liver lobule zonation markers—E-cadherin (purple) and glutamine synthetase (red)—to reveal the highly regional proliferation of hepatocytes. See Liu et al.

Scalable genome editing in zebrafish with MIC-Drop

The cover shows a microinjection needle filled with hundreds of multiplexed intermixed CRISPR droplets (MIC-Drop). Each droplet contains the components needed to edit a different zebrafish gene, and one droplet is injected into each of the zebrafish embryos shown in the background. See Parvez et al.

Human blastoids model blastocyst-stage embryos

The cover shows a confocal image of a human blastoid labeled for the tight junction molecule ZO-1 (yellow), the adherens junction molecule CDH1 (magenta), the apical domain molecule aPKC (cyan) and nuclei (blue).

See Heidari Khoei et al.

Whole-mouse imaging at the cellular level

Nanobody(VHH)-boosted 3D imaging of solvent-cleared organs (vDISCO) enables the labelling of single cells in intact animals or whole organs. The cover shows a vDISCO image of a whole mouse where individual metastatic cells (magenta), bones and organs (cyan) and muscles (yellow) are labelled via nanobodies.

See Cai et al.

Microcrystals of fatty acid photodecarboxylase

Fatty acid photodecarboxylase is a photoenzyme with potential green chemistry applications. Structural insight into its enzymatic mechanism can be obtained by time-resolved crystallography. Efficient reaction initiation requires homogeneously sized microcrystals. Such crystals are shown here, they were grown using the seeding protocols described in this issue.

See Shoeman et al.

Intestinal organoid

Mouse intestinal organoid immunostained for proliferating cells (Ki67 in yellow), cell adhesion (p120 in pink) and nuclei (Hoechst in blue).

See Horvath et al.

3D-printed optogenetic probes for wireless neuromodulation

A 3D-printing-based manufacturing approach enables facile and rapid development of optogenetic neural probes of any desired design, length and dimension. These probes can be easily assembled with a tiny Bluetooth module to allow wireless optogenetics in freely behaving animals for complex behavioral neuroscience studies.

See Parker et al.