News & Views in 2008

Comprehensive sets of clones and improved high-throughput methods for production of functional proteins now allow proteome-scale in vitro experiments on nearly 15,000 human genes.

Efficient methods to characterize the binding properties of affinity reagents are required. A combination of bacterial surface display, flow cytometry and pyrosequencing is now used for high-speed mapping of the epitopes recognized by antibodies.

A portable fiber-optic epifluorescence microscope allows real-time imaging of brain function with cellular spatial resolution in freely moving mice.

A combination of automated screening and next-generation sequencing makes it possible to identify Caenorhabditis elegans mutants at unprecedented speed and scale.

A decade after the introduction of genetically encoded Ca²⁺ indicator proteins (GECIs), a new generation of improved GECIs demonstrates their usefulness for the functional analysis of the mammalian brain in vivo.

Applying a classical solution to a cutting-edge problem, two groups used bacterial conjugation to construct Escherichia coli double mutants on a genome-wide scale. This will allow comprehensive genetic interaction screens in bacteria for the first time.

Algorithms for analyzing single-particle tracking images to obtain the paths of individual particles are challenged by high-density data. Improvements in algorithms help to overcome these limitations.

Two complementary approaches, both using next-generation sequencing, have successfully tackled the scale and the complexity of mammalian transcriptomes, at once revealing unprecedented detail and allowing better quantification.

Strategies for the comprehensive identification of transcript isoforms produced from specific genomic loci make use of and expand existing tools and resources.

Advances in the application of microfluidics technology to biological assays using the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans help to automate otherwise time-consuming experiments.

Technological developments are pushing the emerging super-resolution fluorescence microscopy techniques into the world of three-dimensional imaging.

Screening for photostability in addition to color and brightness creates better fluorescent proteins.

A spheroid assay that recapitulates angiogenesis in vivo and a ring assay to measure lymphangiogenesis in vitro expand the toolbox of techniques to investigate these processes during development and tumor progression.

A high-throughput pipeline to engineer bacterial artificial chromosomes (BACs) expressing tagged genes of higher eukaryotes allows large-scale protein localization and interaction studies.

Microscopic resolution far beyond the diffraction limit is possible by localizing single molecules individually. This approach has now been demonstrated on living cells.

Advances in methods that allow targeted remote control of neuronal activity open new possibilities for investigating and manipulating the function of neuronal circuits in vivo.

Although Drosophila melanogaster offers a variety of refined genetic techniques, it has lagged behind other model organisms in the high-resolution genotyping arena. A newly developed set of tools addresses this deficiency and provides a very welcome addition to the fly geneticists' armory.

A new set of computational methods provide association of transcription factor binding motifs to gene function.

Two mouse models that initiate sporadic tumors seek to recapitulate spontaneously arising human cancers.

A single biomolecule carries information that becomes lost in an ensemble average. Methodological developments in imaging are now making it easier to access this hidden information in a live-cell context.