Primers and PrimeViews

This PrimeView highlights the procedure for growing and maintaining organoids from human stem cells, with a focus on recent developments that have reduced a number of limitations in organoid development and research.

Organoids are cell-based in vitro models derived from stem cells, reconstituting the complex structure and function of the corresponding tissue. In this Primer, Zhao, Chen, Dowbaj, Sljukic, Bratlie, Lin et al. discuss the development of organoids and methods for controlling their cellular environment.

This PrimeView highlights different transduction mechanisms, protein mediators and magnetic nanotransducers that can be used to control cell signalling.

Magnetic nanomaterials can be used to transduce magnetic fields into biologically relevant signals. This Primer describes different magnetic transduction mechanisms, the design of nanotransducers and example applications for studying cell signalling and neuroscience.

This PrimeView highlights the use of intravital microscopy techniques to study a range of biological processes, including neurobiology, stem cell biology and cancer research.

Intravital microscopy (IVM) techniques are used to visualize intact and live tissues at the cellular and subcellular level. In this Primer, Scheele, Herrmann et al. discuss IVM in rodents, outlining challenges and opportunities for using the technique.

This PrimeView highlights the general experimental design and setup of imaging flow cytometry.

Imaging flow cytometry combines the high-event-rate nature of flow cytometry with single-cell image acquisition associated with microscopy. In this Primer, Rees et al. discuss the typical imaging flow instrumentation, the type of data acquired and how to analyse them.

This PrimeView highlights how hydrogen produced from water electrolysis can be utilized for fuel and chemical feedstock.

Electrochemical water splitting using renewable electricity is a promising method for the sustainable production of hydrogen. This Primer overviews considerations, techniques and methods for water electrolysis and describes methods to improve rigour and reproducibility when analysing electrochemical data.

This PrimeView highlights three model-based analysis methods for quantitative analysis of a hologram.

Holographic microscopy is based on collecting holograms, patterns of dark and light fringes, and analysing them to obtain information about the specimen’s properties. This Primer introduces in-line holographic microscopy, with a focus on three analysis methods: generative modelling, machine learning and hybrid approaches.

This PrimeView highlights the instrumentation for optical coherence tomography (OCT) in clinical settings, with an emphasis on Fourier domain OCT, spectral domain OCT and circular OCT.

Optical coherence tomography can be used as a conventional microscope, ophthalmic scanner or endoscope. In this Primer, Bouma et al. outline the instrumentation and data processing in obtaining topological and internal microstructure information from samples in three dimensions.

This PrimeView highlights the steps involved in metabolic labelling of cells for time-resolved single-cell RNA-seq analysis.

The combination of single-cell RNA sequencing with metabolic RNA labelling enables a time-resolved view of transcriptional responses in individual cells. In this Primer, Erhard and Saliba et al. discuss metabolic labelling approaches and how to assess the temporal dynamics of transcriptional responses in different conditions.

This PrimeView highlights different complexity models that can be used for ocean biogeochemical modelling

Ocean biogeochemical models use coupled differential equations to describe the transformation of the ocean’s circulation, physical and biogeochemical properties under different conditions. This Primer introduces the process of model construction and explains the characteristics of various model types, from simple to complex, alongside their advantages and disadvantages.

This PrimeView highlights approaches to improve the reproducibility of in-depth interviews in the social sciences.

In-depth interviews are a versatile form of qualitative data collection used by researchers across the social sciences. In this Primer, Knott et al. describe the stages and challenges involved in designing and conducting interviews, how to analyse the data and strategies to overcome challenges.