Research Briefing |
Featured
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Technology Feature |
AI under the microscope: the algorithms powering the search for cells
Deep learning is driving the rapid evolution of algorithms that can automatically find and trace cells in a wide range of microscopy experiments.
- Michael Eisenstein
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Nature Video |
The 3D printer that crafts complex robotic organs in a single run
Combining machine vision with contactless error correction allows for even more advanced multi-material printing.
- Dan Fox
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Article
| Open Access
The social and structural architecture of the yeast protein interactome
A protein interaction network constructed with data from high-throughput affinity enrichment coupled to mass spectrometry provides a highly saturated yeast interactome with 31,004 interactions, including low-abundance complexes, membrane protein complexes and non-taggable protein complexes.
- André C. Michaelis
- , Andreas-David Brunner
- & Matthias Mann
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Article
| Open Access
Embryo-scale reverse genetics at single-cell resolution
We present the ‘zebrafish single-cell atlas of perturbed embryos’, single-cell trancriptomic data of developing zebrafish embryos across various timepoints and with genetic perturbations.
- Lauren M. Saunders
- , Sanjay R. Srivatsan
- & Cole Trapnell
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News & Views |
The deep route to low-field MRI with high potential
A type of magnetic resonance imaging, known as low-field MRI, could make the technique more widely accessible, but only if the image quality can be improved. A deep-learning protocol might hold the key.
- Patricia M. Johnson
- & Yvonne W. Lui
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News |
New explanation for infertility: eggs lacking a mysterious ‘lattice’
The discovery of a ‘storage locker’ for essential proteins could explain some cases of infertility.
- Gayathri Vaidyanathan
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Article
| Open Access
Neural signal propagation atlas of Caenorhabditis elegans
Measurements of signal propagation in more than 23,000 pairs of neurons from nematode worms show that predictions of neural function made on the basis of anatomy are often incorrect, in part owing to the effects of extrasynaptic signalling.
- Francesco Randi
- , Anuj K. Sharma
- & Andrew M. Leifer
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News Explainer |
Is CRISPR safe? Genome editing gets its first FDA scrutiny
Advisers to the US regulatory agency will examine the safety profile of a CRISPR-based treatment for sickle-cell disease.
- Heidi Ledford
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Article
| Open Access
A microfluidic transistor for automatic control of liquids
Flow limitation is exploited to develop a microfluidic device exhibiting flow–pressure behaviour analogous to the current–voltage characteristics of an electronic transistor.
- Kaustav A. Gopinathan
- , Avanish Mishra
- & Mehmet Toner
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Editorial |
How to share data — not just equally, but equitably
Just as with many natural resources, wealthy countries have been extracting scientific data from poorer nations for centuries. Researchers are changing that.
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Technology Feature |
Soft-landing methods aim to simplify structural biology
Linking mass spectrometry with cryo-electron microscopy could transform understanding of complex protein structures — if scientists can show that samples remain intact when they hit their target.
- Michael Eisenstein
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Career Column |
Methods section too short? Use online protocols to make complex techniques understandable
New wet-lab methods can be hard to share owing to their complexity, but with a little extra effort, you can give users a leg-up in getting started.
- Lars Borm
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News |
Monkey survives for two years after gene-edited pig-kidney transplant
Survival time is one of the longest for any interspecies transplant — and moves pig organs closer to human use.
- Max Kozlov
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Article
| Open Access
Ultra-fast deep-learned CNS tumour classification during surgery
Sturgeon is a pretrained neural network that uses incremental results from nanopore sequencing to rapidly classify central nervous system tumours and can be used to aid critical decision-making during surgery.
- C. Vermeulen
- , M. Pagès-Gallego
- & J. de Ridder
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Career Guide |
How to spice up your bioinformatics skill set with AI
Incorporating machine-learning tools into data analysis can accelerate discovery and free up valuable time.
- Rachael Pells
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Career Column |
Embracing the command line: my unexpected career in computational biology
A crash course in bioinformatics put Ming Tommy Tang on a different path.
- Ming Tommy Tang
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Perspective |
The status of the human gene catalogue
Although the catalogue of human protein-coding genes is nearing completion, the number of non-coding RNA genes remains highly uncertain, and for all genes much work remains to be done to understand their functions.
- Paulo Amaral
- , Silvia Carbonell-Sala
- & Steven L. Salzberg
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Article
| Open Access
Large-scale plasma proteomics comparisons through genetics and disease associations
Comparisons of phenotypic and genetic association with protein levels from Icelandic and UK Biobank cohorts show that using multiple analysis platforms and stratifying populations by ancestry improves the detection of associations and allows the refinement of their location within the genome.
- Grimur Hjorleifsson Eldjarn
- , Egil Ferkingstad
- & Kari Stefansson
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Technology Feature |
How open-source software could finally get the world’s microscopes speaking the same language
A plethora of standards mean shareable and verifiable microscopy data often get lost in translation. Biologists are working on a solution.
- Michael Brooks
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Article
| Open Access
Proteome census upon nutrient stress reveals Golgiphagy membrane receptors
A proteomics analysis demonstrates that, during nutrient stress, mammalian cells prioritize degradation by autophagy of membrane proteins and identifies receptors that mediate this process at the Golgi and also have a role in Golgi remodelling during neuronal differentiation.
- Kelsey L. Hickey
- , Sharan Swarup
- & J. Wade Harper
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News Explainer |
How Dolly the sheep’s legacy lives on: CRISPR cattle and cloned camels
Dolly-style animal cloning underpins CRISPR livestock, but changes loom for the field.
- Heidi Ledford
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Research Briefing |
Using CRISPR to study gene function aids understanding of 22q11.2 deletion syndrome
Most high-throughput assays to investigate the role of genes in disease involve in vitro cell models. Now a technology that targets CRISPR–Cas9 gene editing to specific cells in mice, and analyses transcriptional effects in single nuclei, has led to fresh insights into the genes involved in 22q11.2 deletion syndrome.
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Article
| Open Access
Transgenic ferret models define pulmonary ionocyte diversity and function
Conditional genetic ferret models enable ionocyte lineage tracing, ionocyte ablation and ionocyte-specific deletion of CFTR to elucidate the roles of pulmonary ionocyte biology and function during human health and disease.
- Feng Yuan
- , Grace N. Gasser
- & John F. Engelhardt
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Article
| Open Access
Transcriptional linkage analysis with in vivo AAV-Perturb-seq
An in vivo single-cell CRISPR screening method identifies transcriptional phenotypes of 22q11.2 deletion syndrome associated with a broad dysregulation of a class of disease susceptibility genes that are important for RNA processing and synaptic function.
- Antonio J. Santinha
- , Esther Klingler
- & Randall J. Platt
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Technology Feature |
Catching proteins at play: the method revealing the cell’s inner mysteries
Cryo-electron tomography is a hugely promising tool in visual proteomics — if researchers can work out what they are seeing.
- Michael Eisenstein
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Book Review |
Geneticist J. Craig Venter: ‘I consider retirement tantamount to death’
The human genome ‘maverick’ talks sequencing the ocean, setting up a health-screening company after checking his own genes — and why he has no plans to stop.
- Heidi Ledford
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News |
Super-precise CRISPR tool enters US clinical trials for the first time
Base editing, which makes specific changes to a cell’s genome, is put to the test in CAR-T-cell treatments for leukaemia.
- Heidi Ledford
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News Q&A |
UFO sightings: how NASA can bring science to the debate
An astrophysicist who advised the agency talks to Nature about ways to bring rigour to reports of ‘unidentified anomalous phenomena’.
- Alexandra Witze
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Article |
Assembly of 43 human Y chromosomes reveals extensive complexity and variation
De novo assemblies of 43 Y chromosomes spanning 182,900 years of human evolution reveal considerable diversity in the size and structure of the human Y chromosome.
- Pille Hallast
- , Peter Ebert
- & Charles Lee
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Technology Feature |
The quest to map the mouse brain
By combining single-cell sequencing with methods to map the spatial location of gene expression, scientists are unravelling the extraordinary cellular diversity of the brain.
- Diana Kwon
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Article
| Open Access
Direct observation of the conformational states of PIEZO1
The plasma membrane can expand the blades of the PIEZO1 ion channel, impacting channel activation.
- Eric M. Mulhall
- , Anant Gharpure
- & Ardem Patapoutian
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Technology Feature |
Sharp resolution, big samples: ExA-SPIM microscope accelerates brain imaging
An innovative microscopy technique bridges the gap between field of view and resolution.
- Alla Katsnelson
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News |
This moss survived 165 million years — and now it's under threat from climate change
Ancient plant survived the formation of the Himalayas, but might now be facing extinction.
- Jude Coleman
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Article
| Open Access
No evidence for magnetic field effects on the behaviour of Drosophila
Following testing of magnetic field effects on 97,658 flies moving in a two-arm maze and on 10,960 flies performing spontaneous escape behaviour (negative geotaxis), no evidence was found for magnetically sensitive behaviour in Drosophila.
- Marco Bassetto
- , Thomas Reichl
- & Henrik Mouritsen
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Book Review |
Anna Atkins: pioneering botanical photographer who captured algae and ferns in ghostly blue images
A compilation of 550 original plates reveals the dedicated work of the nineteenth-century woman who was the first to publish a book with cyanotypes of specimens.
- Georgina Ferry
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News |
AI search of Neanderthal proteins resurrects ‘extinct’ antibiotics
Scientists identify protein snippets made by extinct hominins.
- Saima Sidik
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Article
| Open Access
Mega-scale experimental analysis of protein folding stability in biology and design
Large-scale assays using cDNA display proteolysis are used to measure the folding stabilities of protein domains, providing a method to quantify the effects of mutations on protein folding, with applications in protein design.
- Kotaro Tsuboyama
- , Justas Dauparas
- & Gabriel J. Rocklin
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Article |
High-throughput Oligopaint screen identifies druggable 3D genome regulators
High-throughput DNA or RNA labelling with optimized Oligopaints (HiDRO) reveals more than 300 factors that influence genome folding during interphase, including 43 genes that were validated as either increasing or decreasing interactions between topologically associating domains.
- Daniel S. Park
- , Son C. Nguyen
- & Eric F. Joyce
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News |
Developing human embryos imaged at highest-ever resolution
Non-invasive imaging approach could lead to innovations in embryo screening.
- Miryam Naddaf
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Article
| Open Access
Evolution of a minimal cell
An engineered minimal cell evolves to escape the negative consequences of genome streamlining.
- R. Z. Moger-Reischer
- , J. I. Glass
- & J. T. Lennon
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Outlook |
How genetically modified mosquitoes could eradicate malaria
Gene-drive technology that can spread antimalarial modifications throughout mosquito populations is maturing, but there are questions to answer before it can be used in the wild.
- Sam Jones
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News |
Ancient-DNA researcher fired for ‘serious misconduct’ lands new role
Former co-workers have expressed shock that Charles Sturt University in southeastern Australia has appointed Alan Cooper to its faculty.
- Dyani Lewis
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Article |
Continuous synthesis of E. coli genome sections and Mb-scale human DNA assembly
BAC stepwise insertion synthesis (BASIS) can be used to build synthetic genomes for diverse organisms, and continuous genome synthesis (CGS) enables the rapid synthesis of entire Escherichia coli genomes from functional designs.
- Jérôme F. Zürcher
- , Askar A. Kleefeldt
- & Jason W. Chin
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Article |
A spatially resolved single-cell genomic atlas of the adult human breast
The Human Breast Cell Atlas identifies 12 major breast cell types and 58 biological cell states, revealing abundant pericyte, endothelial and immune cell populations, and highly diverse luminal epithelial cell states.
- Tapsi Kumar
- , Kevin Nee
- & Nicholas Navin
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Article
| Open Access
Single-cell quantification of ribosome occupancy in early mouse development
A single-cell ribosome profiling method can provide data at the level of allele-specific ribosome engagement in early development.
- Hakan Ozadam
- , Tori Tonn
- & Can Cenik
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Article
| Open Access
A pangenome reference of 36 Chinese populations
A study reports data from the first phase of the Chinese Pangenome Consortium including 116 de novo assemblies from 58 core samples representing 36 minority Chinese ethnic groups.
- Yang Gao
- , Xiaofei Yang
- & Shuhua Xu
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Article |
Genome editing of a rice CDP-DAG synthase confers multipathogen resistance
Editing of a rice gene that has a role in phospholipid synthesis has endowed rice plants with broad-spectrum resistance to disease, including protection from common bacterial and fungal pathogens, without decreasing the yield.
- Gan Sha
- , Peng Sun
- & Guotian Li
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Technology Feature |
Powerful microscope captures motor proteins in unprecedented detail
Called MINFLUX, the super-resolution method allows researchers to track molecules under cellular conditions.
- Amanda Heidt
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Article |
Hydration solids
A study shows that water can control macroscopic properties of biological materials through the hydration force, giving rise to a distinct class of solid matter with unusual properties.
- Steven G. Harrellson
- , Michael S. DeLay
- & Ozgur Sahin
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