Biological techniques articles from across Nature Portfolio

The field of biogerontology has established itself through significant lines of research in recent decades. However, despite early breakthroughs, progress in understanding the aging process has been slow. To push the field forward, new methodologies and technologies are likely needed to unravel the complexity of aging. This meeting brought together leading scientists and innovators to explore some emerging approaches, presenting groundbreaking advancements in four key sessions, culminating in a panel discussion.

Accurately determining food intake remains a substantial challenge in nutrition research. This issue of Nature Metabolism introduces a methodology for assessing dietary intake, using stool metagenomic data to detect food DNA from a broad range of foods.

Visualizing RNA molecules in live cells remains a challenge, and existing methods require genetic manipulation or have limited resolution. Our study overcomes these limitations by using the programmable CRISPR–Csm tool to bind and track individual transcripts in their native state.

This Review highlights recent progress in the development of molecular probes for the selective imaging of specific immune cells to aid understanding of the immune system, as well as disease diagnosis and prognosis.

Ueda et al. develop a sensor targeted to tumour cells that tracks extracellular H₂O₂. Tumour cells in H₂O₂ hotspots undergo partial epithelial–mesenchymal transition and migrate away from H₂O₂ hotspots. This is not seen in NRF2-hyperactivated tumours.

Short-term overeating with calorie-rich snacks is shown to disrupt insulin action in the brain of men, which outlasted the time-frame of overeating.

The field of biogerontology has established itself through significant lines of research in recent decades. However, despite early breakthroughs, progress in understanding the aging process has been slow. To push the field forward, new methodologies and technologies are likely needed to unravel the complexity of aging. This meeting brought together leading scientists and innovators to explore some emerging approaches, presenting groundbreaking advancements in four key sessions, culminating in a panel discussion.

Accurately determining food intake remains a substantial challenge in nutrition research. This issue of Nature Metabolism introduces a methodology for assessing dietary intake, using stool metagenomic data to detect food DNA from a broad range of foods.

Visualizing RNA molecules in live cells remains a challenge, and existing methods require genetic manipulation or have limited resolution. Our study overcomes these limitations by using the programmable CRISPR–Csm tool to bind and track individual transcripts in their native state.

The MARBLE method addresses a critical challenge in neural population recordings: inferring expressive and interpretable latent representations that are comparable across experiments and animals. It achieves this by explicitly leveraging the low-dimensional structure of neural states through geometric deep learning to learn the dynamical flow fields in neural activity.

These researchers put their labs’ philosophies into practice and find it empowers science and collaboration.