Volume 23 Issue 1, January 2026

Not all conferences offer childcare, but when they do, these scientists, who are also mothers, rejoice. The toys are pretty good, too.

The jellyfish Clytia hemisphaerica has long been established as a model for studying embryogenesis and gametogenesis because of its transparency, simple tissue architecture and evolutionary position. With the recent development of efficient transgenesis, this jellyfish is now poised for tackling systems-level questions in comparative neuroscience and regeneration.

Since the chance discovery of nanobodies in the late 1980s, their uses and applications have kept growing. Researchers are now exploring new ways to harness nanobody versatility.

TIRTL-seq is an innovative method that allows efficient and cost-effective identification of αβ TCR clones from millions of T cells with the aid of a pairing algorithm called T-SHELL, which provides high accuracy and throughput in sequencing paired TCR clones.

The gold standard system for mRNA imaging in live cells just got upgraded by being degraded. This development improves signal-to-noise ratios and may lead to a better understanding of mRNA transport and localization.

A technique called SASS increases temporal signal-to-noise ratio for functional MRI by taking advantage of the time it takes to reach steady state when collecting functional images.

DynamicAtlas is a new open-source tool for incorporating gene expression and tissue shape changes into a single atlas with a continuous developmental timeline.

Modeling cellular responses to developmental and chemical cues is essential for understanding disease progression and informing therapeutic strategies, yet it often demands extensive experimental screening. We have developed a conditional diffusion model called Squidiff, which enables the in silico prediction of single-cell transcriptomic responses to both developmental signals and perturbations.

We introduce the Cryo-EM Image Evaluation Foundation (Cryo-IEF) model, which has been pretrained on 65 million particle images in an unsupervised manner. Cryo-IEF excels in diverse cryogenic electron microscopy data-processing tasks; it automates the complex workflow and makes this technology more accessible and robust.

We developed SmartEM, a method that integrates machine learning directly into the image acquisition process of an electron microscope. By allocating imaging time in a specific manner — scanning quickly at first, then rescanning only critical areas more slowly — we are able to accelerate the mapping of neural circuits up to sevenfold without sacrificing accuracy.

This Review introduces ten cell migration assays, offers practical guidance toward selecting the best assay for a specific biological question and describes how future advances can reveal important insights into dynamic cellular behaviors.

This Review describes the principles of data analysis for extracting quantitative data from cell migration assays. It also highlights advanced image analysis tools and offers practical guidance for interested users.

TIRTL-seq is a high-throughput method for paired T cell receptor sequencing at the cohort scale.

Squidiff is a diffusion-based model to predict transcriptomic changes in response to perturbations.

Parallelized single-molecule fluorescence and single-molecule FRET experiments enable quantitative biophysics investigations of molecular function from multiple samples in a single experiment.

Cryo-IEF is a pre-trained foundation model for performing diverse image-processing tasks in single-particle cryo-EM. CryoWizard, enabled by Cryo-IEF, is a fully automated cryo-EM processing pipeline.

RFdiffusion2, an extension of the RFdiffusion framework, builds de novo enzyme active sites using atom-level functional group constraints.

ImmunoMatch is a machine-learning framework that learns from heavy and light immunoglobulin chains to predict cognate sequence pairings.

C-COMPASS is an open-source software designed to predict the spatial cellular distribution of proteins and lipids from cellular organelle profiling using a neural network-based regression model.

The ExoSloNano system facilitates nanogold probe-based labeling of specific proteins of a wide range of sizes in live cells for cryo-electron tomography and correlative light and electron microscopy studies.

mScarlet3-S2 is a red fluorescent protein that is highly photostable and sufficiently bright. It is especially useful for applications such as stimulated emission depletion or structured illumination microscopy imaging with prolonged imaging times.

Destabilized variants of MS2 and PP7 coat proteins enable improved live-cell imaging of tagged RNAs in mammalian cells by decreasing background signal caused by unbound coat protein–fluorescent protein fusions.

This work presents two distinct RNA-regulated destabilization domains that support three-color live-cell imaging of single mRNA molecules, one of which shows minimal impact on RNA stability.

4Pi-SIMFLUX is a single-molecule localization microscopy approach that achieves a near-isotropic resolution below 10 nm in whole mammalian cells.

ROSE-3D is a single-molecule localization microscopy approach that achieves high isotropic resolution via interferometric localization. The approach is capable of whole-cell and multicolor imaging.

SmartEM is a ‘smart’ pipeline for electron microscopy-based data acquisition for connectomics. In order to efficiently image large datasets, the approach involves imaging at short pixel dwell times and identifying problematic regions that are then imaged with longer dwell times and therefore higher quality.

CaBLAM is a bioluminescent genetically encoded calcium indicator that delivers high-contrast signals as shown in cell culture, in the in vivo mouse brain and in zebrafish larvae.

Stimulus-modulated approach to steady state (SASS) is an acquisition scheme for event-related fMRI that generates data with high temporal signal-to-noise ratios interspaced with acquisition-free periods for stimulus presentation or response recording. It is demonstrated in auditory and visual stimulation paradigms in marmosets at 9.4 T and in human participants at 3 T.

LatentSNA is a method for network analysis in human neuroimaging. It facilitates linking neural activity with behavior and improves biomarker prediction by reducing type II errors.

Analysis of behavioral data often involves tracking animal keypoints in video and motion capture recordings. DISK imputes missing keypoints, thereby improving downstream analyses.

This Analysis benchmarks 50 state-of-the-art TCR–epitope binding prediction methods and evaluates key factors that influence predictive performance.

DynamicAtlas integrates fixed and live imaging data to generate a morphodynamic atlas of Drosophila development.