Each month, the editorial team gets together to select papers describing exciting new methods to cover in short news pieces in the Research Highlights section of the journal. We comb the recent literature in top general journals like Nature, Science and Cell, as well as top specialized journals in various subject areas, and we even take suggestions from authors! Unfortunately, we cannot cover all of the interesting methods papers we find, so each month I will highlight these papers, which didn’t quite make the cut, in Methagora.

Here are a few such papers describing intriguing methods, which were published within the last month or so. Enjoy!

Imaging intracellular viscosity of a single cell during photoinduced cell death

Nature Chemistry 1, 69 – 73 (2009)

Highly efficient neural conversion of human ES and iPS cells by dual inhibition of SMAD signaling

Nature Biotechnology 27, 275 – 280 (2009)

The Dynamic Control of Kiss-And-Run and Vesicular Reuse Probed with Single Nanoparticles

Science 323, 1448 – 1453 (2009)

Identifying the proteins to which small-molecule probes and drugs bind in cells

PNAS 106, 4617 – 4622 (2009)

Femtosecond characterization of vibrational optical activity of chiral molecules

Nature 458, 310 – 313 (2009)

A membrane interferometer

PNAS, published online March 23, 2009

Biodegradable luminescent porous silicon nanoparticles for in vivo applications

Nature Materials 8, 331 – 336 (2009)

Identification and quantitation of newly synthesized proteins in E. coli by enrichment of azido homoalanine-labeled peptides with diagonal chromatography

Mol. Cell. Proteomics, published online March 25, 2009

STED microscopy reveals crystal colour centres with nanometric resolution

Nature Photonics 3, 144 – 147 (2009)

Nature Methods has named next-generation sequencing its inaugural Method of the Year.

Check out the special feature (freely accessible online) with Commentaries by Stephan Schuster and by Barbara Wold and Rick Myers. In addition to celebrating the Method of the Year 2007 the special feature contains a shortlist of Methods to Watch in the years to come.

Here, we welcome your comments on our choices as well as your suggestions of other methods to keep an eye on. We firmly intend this event to become an end-of-the-year tradition, and we hope for your participation in next year’s nominations!