2007: next-generation sequencing.
2008:
With its tremendous potential for understanding cellular biology now poised to become a reality, super-resolution fluorescence microscopy is our choice for Method of the Year.
2009:
Nature Methods' Method of the Year 2009 goes to induced pluripotency for its potential for biological discovery.
2010:
With the capacity to control cellular behaviors using light and genetically encoded light-sensitive proteins, optogenetics has opened new doors for experimentation across biological fields.
2011:
The ability to introduce targeted, tailored changes into the genomes of several species will make it feasible to ask more precise biological questions. In our annual toast to biological research methods and to the scientists who develop them, we have chosen genome editing with engineered nucleases as our Method of the Year 2011.
2012:
New method and tool developments are helping to bring targeted proteome analysis technologies to a broader array of biologists. At the close of 2012 at Nature Methods, we continue our annual celebration of biological research methods with our choice of targeted proteomics as Method of the Year.
2013:
Methods to sequence the DNA and RNA of single cells are poised to transform many areas of biology and medicine.
Once considered a technical challenge reserved for a few specialized labs, single-cell transcriptome and genome sequencing is becoming robust and broadly accessible. Exciting insights from recent studies are revealing the potential to understand biology at the unitary resolution of life, and last year marked a turning point in the widespread adoption of these methods to address a variety of research questions. For these reasons, single-cell sequencing is our choice of Method of the Year for 2013.
2014:
Light-sheet fluorescence microscopy can image living samples in three dimensions with relatively low phototoxicity and at high speed.
2015:
The end of 'blob-ology': single-particle cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) is now being used to solve macromolecular structures at high resolution.