Readers will notice some design changes to the journal. Apart from sprucing up the way we look, the nomenclature used for content has been standardized to address inconsistencies that arose over the years due to the independence of editorial teams at different Nature journals. Nature Biotechnology will now be considering research submissions for Articles and two other types of content: Letters and Brief Communications. Letters (see p. 687) describe significant technical advances that improve the efficiency/utility of a methodology (formerly Technical Reports). Brief Communications is a format for short, topical reports of broad interest (see p. 635). A complete description of our revised formats can be found at http://www.nature.com/nbt/authors/index.html