Research Highlights in 2016

A multicolor approach specifically labels multiple targets in electron microscopy images.

A synthetic hydrogel matrix gives researchers greater control over intestinal organoid culture.

A rapid mix-and-inject serial femtosecond crystallography approach enables structure determination of ligand-binding intermediates.

The development of temperature-inducible molecular bioswitches allows on-demand activation of synthetic genetic circuits in microbes.

Neurons that are activated in response to a particular stimulus or behavior can be labeled or manipulated with a new method.

Careful benchmarking improves software methods for analyzing data-independent-acquisition mass spectrometry data.

An optimized illumination strategy allows for uniform single-molecule localization microscopy over large regions.

A CRISPR–Cas9-based approach identifies synonymous codons that can be reassigned to encode new chemical building blocks.

A combination of protein and DNA isolation methods expands our grasp of cellular reprogramming.

A nanoscopic force clamp enables high-throughput single-molecule analysis of DNA under tension without connection to a macroscopic instrument.

Cord blood provides important clues for directing human pluripotent stem cells to become pre-hematopoietic stem cells.

Fluorescence polarization enables super-resolution dipole orientation mapping.

Researchers have developed a protocol for differentiation of microglia-like cells from human pluripotent stem cells.

Oxford scientists unleash radical chemistry to explore novel protein activities through synthetic post-translational modifications.

Recent reports on the magnetogenetic manipulation of neurons are being called into question.

The discovery of two distinct endonuclease activities in the C2c2 protein explains how template RNAs are processed in type VI CRISPR systems and enables the development of a sensitive RNA detection system.

A rapid method for isolating mitochondria with exquisitely high purity helps researchers profile metabolic dynamics within this organelle.

In the mouse brain, researchers use sequencing to map long-range neuronal projections...a lot of projections.

Sequential rounds of immunoprecipitation and barcoding reveal the genome-wide occurrence of paired histone marks.

A simple tweak on the zygote's mitotic spindle generated hybrid Caenorhabditis elegans with certain tissues (such as those of the nervous system) consisting of entirely maternal genomes and others (such as the germline) consisting of entirely paternal genomes.