Biological techniques articles within Nature

Featured

  • News & Views |

    Measuring the tension forces at specific sites in living cells is technically challenging. Now, a fluorescent biosensor protein can be used to characterize dynamic local changes in tension in migrating cells.

    • Andrew D. Doyle
    •  & Kenneth M. Yamada

  • News & Views |

    Autophagy is an essential cellular process for protein and organelle quality control. Analyses of proteins that interact with the human autophagic machinery provide an outline of the molecular organization of this pathway.

    • Beth Levine
    •  & Rama Ranganathan

  • News |

    Implanted tissue and microchip mimic both perform functions of lung.

    • Alla Katsnelson

  • Brief Communications Arising |

    • Sabine Conrad
    • , Markus Renninger
    •  & Thomas Skutella

  • Letter |

    Blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signals are the basis for much of the work on which regions of the human brain are active during particular tasks or behaviours, but there is controversy over their source and interpretation. Here a combination of optogenetics and BOLD signal monitoring shows that specific excitatory neurons within a mixed population are sufficient to produce positive BOLD signals, and could be used to map connections.

    • Jin Hyung Lee
    • , Remy Durand
    •  & Karl Deisseroth

  • News & Views |

    Analysis of a selected class of neuron in the brains of live animals using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) opens the door to mapping genetically specified neural circuits.

    • David A. Leopold

  • Opinion |

    Many researchers avoid using female animals. Stringent measures should consign this prejudice to the past, argue Irving Zucker and Annaliese Beery, in the third piece of three on gender bias in biomedicine.

    • Irving Zucker
    •  & Annaliese K. Beery

  • Editorial |

    Mouse research for human diseases has grown, and researchers must defend and promote it accordingly.

  • Opinion |

    Nature asked eight synthetic-biology experts about the implications for science and society of the “synthetic cell” made by the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI). The institute's team assembled, modified and implanted a synthesized genome into a DNA-free bacterial shell to make a self-replicating Mycoplasma mycoides.

  • Editorial |

    Rats turn out to be surprisingly useful for research on cognition. But if the goal is to understand the human brain and its many disorders, then primate studies remain essential.

  • News Feature |

    Studying primates is the only way to understand human cognition — or so neuroscientists thought. But there may be much to learn from rats and mice, finds Alison Abbott.

    • Alison Abbott

  • News |

    A technology that simultaneously reads a DNA sequence and its crucial modifications makes its debut.

    • Alla Katsnelson

  • News Feature |

    Systems neuroscientists are pushing aside their electrophysiology rigs to make room for the tools of 'optogenetics'. Lizzie Buchen reports from a field in the process of reinvention.

    • Lizzie Buchen

  • Article |

    Single-molecule studies allow biological processes to be examined one molecule at a time, as they occur. Here, zero-mode waveguides have been used to concentrate reactions in zeptolitre-sized volumes, making it possible to study real-time translocation by the ribosome. The binding of transfer RNAs (tRNAs) to the ribosome could be followed; the results show that tRNA release from the exit site is uncoupled from tRNA binding to the aminoacyl-tRNA site.

    • Sotaro Uemura
    • , Colin Echeverría Aitken
    •  & Joseph D. Puglisi

  • News |

    Biomedical scientists say revised European directive on animal welfare averts feared disaster for research.

    • Alison Abbott

  • Letter |

    How large groups of animals move in a coordinated way has defied complete explanation. Inability to track each member of a flock has hampered understanding of the behavioural rules governing flocks of birds. This, however, has been achieved for a small group of homing pigeons fitted with lightweight GPS loggers. A well–defined hierarchy is revealed — the average position of a pigeon within the flock strongly correlates with is position in the social hierarchy (a kind of airborne pecking order).

    • Máté Nagy
    • , Zsuzsa Ákos
    •  & Tamás Vicsek

  • Letter |

    Rhodospsin is a G-protein-coupled receptor that is responsible for vision in dim light. Light isomerizes the protein's retinal chromophore and triggers concerted movements of several transmembrane helices. Here, an approach involving mutant rhodopsins and infrared spectroscopy enabled changes in the electrostatic environment to be seen as rhodopsin proceeded along its activation pathway. Early conformational changes were observed that precede the well-known larger movements of the transmembrane helices.

    • Shixin Ye
    • , Ekaterina Zaitseva
    •  & Reiner Vogel

  • Article |

    High-throughput microscopy combined with gene silencing by RNA interference is a powerful method for studying gene function. Here, a genome-wide method is presented for phenotypic screening of each of the ∼21,000 human protein-coding genes, using two-day imaging of dividing cells with fluorescently labelled chromosomes. The method enabled the identification of hundreds of genes involved in biological functions such as cell division, migration and survival.

    • Beate Neumann
    • , Thomas Walter
    •  & Jan Ellenberg

  • Letter
    | Open Access

    The genome of the zebra finch — a songbird and a model for studying the vertebrate brain, behaviour and evolution — has been sequenced. Comparison with the chicken genome, the only other bird genome available, shows that genes that have neural function and are implicated in the cognitive processing of song have been evolving rapidly in the finch lineage. Moreover, vocal communication engages much of the transcriptome of the zebra finch brain.

    • Wesley C. Warren
    • , David F. Clayton
    •  & Richard K. Wilson

  • Letter |

    'Horizontal gene transfer' refers to the passage of genetic material between non-mating species. Transposable elements (transposons) may be especially prone to horizontal gene transfer, but the mechanisms by which they can spread across diverged species have been elusive. Here it is shown that transposons can spread by hitchhiking in the genomes of parasites. The amount of DNA that can be transferred in this way underscores the impact of horizontal gene transfer on genome evolution.

    • Clément Gilbert
    • , Sarah Schaack
    •  & Cédric Feschotte

  • News & Views |

    An exceptionally large-scale project aimed at assigning function to all protein-coding genes in the human genome is reported on page 721 by Neumann et al.1. Here are two complementary views on the experimental design and analysis, and on how useful the findings will be to cell biologists.

    • Jason R. Swedlow
    • , Cecilia Cotta-Ramusino
    •  & Stephen J. Elledge

  • Letter |

    An imaging technique that could identify all the individual atoms, including defects, in a material would be a useful tool. Here an electron-microscopy approach to the problem, based on annular dark-field imaging, is described. A monolayer of boron nitride was studied, and three types of atomic substitution were identified. Careful analysis of the data enabled the construction of a detailed map of the atomic structure.

    • Ondrej L. Krivanek
    • , Matthew F. Chisholm
    •  & Stephen J. Pennycook

  • Letter |

    Making haploid plants — which inherit chromosomes from only one parent — is useful for genetic research and also, crucially, for plant breeding. A new method for generating haploid Arabidopsis plants is now described, involving the manipulation of a single centromeric protein, CENH3. When cenh3 null plants are crossed with wild-type plants, the mutant chromosomes are eliminated, producing haploid progeny.

    • Maruthachalam Ravi
    •  & Simon W. L. Chan

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