Research Highlights in 2012

Cultures of mouse spermatogonial stem cells on primary testis feeder cells model the in vivo niche.

A tiny lightning rod made of two gold particles and a DNA pillar creates a hotspot that brightens fluorescent signals in zeptoliter volumes.

A low-cost imaging strategy gives scientists the 'big picture' on locomotive behavior of microorganisms in solution.

Electron microscopy welcomes a versatile genetically encoded protein tag.

Newly synthesized proteins of interest can be visualized with a tag by fluorescence imaging or electron microscopy.

Simple two- and three-component circuits induce polarization in yeast cells.

An algorithm to predict protein-protein interactions using structural information yields results comparable in accuracy to those of high-throughput experiments.

Researchers describe a multifunctional reagent for identifying extracellular interactions.

Synthetic networks in mammalian cells can regulate cellular behavior.

Computational processing allows sub–diffraction-limit resolution imaging with a standard wide-field microscope.

A freely accessible transcriptional atlas offers unprecedented possibilities for exploring the human brain.

Single-stranded small interfering RNA offers a potent and simple way to silence gene expression in the body.

The second, genome-wide phase of the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project is being reported.

Two different mass spectrometry–based approaches are applied to analyze protein complexes on a global scale.

A map of the male worm's posterior nervous system offers some surprises.

Looking for agreement between Watson and Crick strands weeds out sequencing artifacts.

Parallel reaction monitoring (PRM)-based targeted mass spectrometry is comparable in performance to selected reaction monitoring (SRM) but requires much less investment in assay development for targeted proteomics applications.

Widely used dyes for conventional microscopy of subcellular structures can also be used for super-resolution imaging.

Two studies of tumor ancestry reveal evidence for discrete populations of cancer stem cells.

New research explores in vivo protein function in the worm—at the genome scale.