Do you use your iPhone (or other smartphone or mobile computing device) in the lab? This month's editorial notes how large numbers of scientists seem to have an iPhone or other mobile device capable of running quite sophisticated applications, or apps. Increasing numbers of these apps are targeted at biologists and some are even intended for use at the lab bench; and lists of recommended apps are popping up on blogs and other sites. Check out the links below for a sample.

22 iPhone Apps for Science Geeks - July 11, 2008
More iPhone apps for scientists - October 13, 2008
5 Bio-Related Apps for your iPhone/iPod Touch - November 4, 2008
iPhone and research - July 24, 2009
iPhone apps every biologist needs - October 9, 2009
10 Best iPhone Apps for Science Majors - December 23, 2009

Some recently released apps that don't appear in the lists above are:
Bio-Rad PCR - Practical guidance for performing PCR and qPCR
NEB Tools - Double digest finder and restrictions enzyme finder tools
ChemMobi - Search for chemical information by name or ID. View selected properties, MSDS information and structure.
LabCal & LabCalPro - Various laboratory calculation functions molarity, moles, stock dilutions, pH & g-force
GeneticCode & GeneticCodePro - Reference tool the nucleic acid codon table and amino acid properties

But how likely is it that bench researchers will actually use an expensive personal mobile computing device like an iPhone in the lab environment? Since we are no longer in the lab ourselves, we wonder what the current generation of grad students and post-docs are doing. Is your iPhone useful in the lab? What about a similar portable device? What apps do you use?

Although there has been a lot of noise surrounding the new Android-based phone from Google we were unable to find an apps intended for use in the lab on that platform, with the exception of seemingly hundreds of scientific calculator apps. We would love to hear from any readers who are familiar with scientific apps available for platforms other than the iPhone.

Yesterday Apple announced the long anticipated iPad mobile computing device. This tablet computer can run iPhone apps in addition to providing a far larger screen and the capability to run more powerful applications than the iPhone. It seems unlikely that such a device would become as ubiquitous among scientists as the iPhone since it doesn't double as a phone. However, it has definite advantages as a dedicated laboratory tool and is more suitable for reading journal articles than the iPhone.

Speaking of reading journal articles, the nature.com app should be available for download from the Apple app store on February 1. We'll keep you posted.

Posted by Daniel Evanko at 09:06 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Our choice for Method of the Year 2009 is induced pluripotent stem cells as tools for biological discovery. Don’t want to read the whole issue? Watch the video. You can link to it on our site or on YouTube.

Posted by Natalie De Souza at 12:37 PM | Permalink

Thanks again to all our readers who took the time to nominate and vote for methods important for biology.

As you probably know by now (and if you don’t, visit our January special issue), we picked induced pluripotent stem cells as Method of the year 2009 for their potential as tools for studying both disease and basic biology. iPS cells did not in fact do too badly among our voters, coming out fifth, both in total votes and in positive votes.

To read our editorial on iPS cells as tools for biology, go here.

The clear method on top in our voting gallery this year was mass spectrometry-based proteomics: the two top vote getters were a paper using peptide ligand libraries for the analysis of the cytoplasmic proteome of human erythrocytes and a paper using targeted proteomics to analyse the proteome of yeast. We certainly agree that these are areas of a lot of interest and included targeted proteomics as a method to watch.

Considering methods that received a minimum of 20 votes (either positive or negative) as a cut-off, the others that stand out in your votes are label-free imaging, single-molecule detection methods inside of cells and methods for studying genome structure. In this case too, your votes dovetail with our selection of methods to watch, here and here.

We’ve solved some of the problems of the voting process from last year but the numbers of votes are still quite low. We welcome suggestions from you as to how we may improve the process.

And tell us what you think of our selection of iPS cells as tools for biology!

Posted by Natalie De Souza at 12:09 PM | Permalink

After many years of steady but seemingly slow progress, the development and use of light-based methods for investigating the function of the brain is really accelerating. Part of this is undoubtedly due to the excitement surrounding the use of light-activated channels for neuronal stimulation. This has been highlighted as one of our "Methods to Watch" for the past two years. But probe development has also overcome some big hurdles recently, from the bolus loading of small calcium dyes to the development of genetically-encoded calcium indicators capable of providing usable signals in living animals.

An editorial in the December issue discusses the advances taking place in optical probes for measuring neuronal function and calls for the use of more standardized procedures for evaluating new probes.

Nature Methods has been requiring a basic set of evaluation tests on new fluorescent proteins that we publish for a few years now and it is possible we could try and do something similar for genetically-encoded sensors but this would obviously be complicated by the greater complexity of sensors and the fact that they respond to different stimuli and have diverse applications.

We encourage the community to tell us what they think about the value and feasibility of standardized tests for new fluorescent probes and sensors.

Posted by Daniel Evanko at 09:00 AM | Permalink

By now you have probably checked out our most recent selection of Research Highlights in our November issue. Here are some other interesting methods papers up for consideration that we weren't able to feature in the journal.

Visualization of ATP levels inside single living cells with fluorescence resonance energy transfer-based genetically encoded indicators
PNAS 106, 15651 - 15656 (2009)

The yeast Wsc1 cell surface sensor behaves like a nanospring in vivo
Nature Chemical Biology 5, 857 - 862 (2009)

Genetic address book for retinal cell types
Nature Neuroscience 12, 1197 - 1204 (2009)

Protein quantification across hundreds of experimental conditions
PNAS 106, 15544 - 15548 (2009)

Biocompatible Functionalized Polyglycerol Microgels with Cell Penetrating Properties
Angewandte Chemie International Edition 48, 7540 - 7545 (2009)

Single-molecule sequencing of an individual human genome
Nature Biotechnology 27, 847 - 850 (2009)

Cell-selective metabolic labeling of proteins
Nature Chemical Biology 5, 715 - 717 (2009)

Generation of Functional Eyes from Pluripotent Cells
PLoS Biology 7, e1000174 (2009)

RNA-MATE: a recursive mapping strategy for high-throughput RNA-sequencing data
Bioinformatics 25, 2615 - 2616 (2009)

Targeted capture and massively parallel sequencing of 12 human exomes
Nature 461, 272 - 276 (2009)

Sensitive digital quantification of DNA methylation in clinical samples
Nature Biotechnology 27, 858 - 863 (2009)

Posted by Allison Doerr at 02:49 PM | Permalink