David Frank, the editor in chief, tasked us with the preparation of this August issue. Introduction

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is a type of scanning probe microscopy that can analyze topographic details of various specimens like ceramics, glass, polymers, and biological samples. AFM offers over 1000 times more resolution than the optical imaging system. Images generated from AFM are three-dimensional surface profiles, offering an advantage over the flat, two-dimensional images from other imaging techniques.
The AFM Probe
The probe is regarded as the heart of any AFM setup and comprises the...

The fossil record documents only a small fraction of all organisms that have ever inhabited Earth. Fossilization is a rare process, and most organisms never become fossils. Moreover, the fossil record only exhibits fossils that have been discovered. Nevertheless, sedimentary rock fossils of long-lived, abundant, hard-bodied organisms dominate the fossil record. These fossils offer valuable information, such as an organism's physical form, behavior, and age. Studying the fossil record helps...

Two basic types of preparation are used to visualize specimens with a light microscope: wet mounts and fixed specimens.
The simplest type of preparation is the wet mount, in which the specimen is placed in a drop of liquid on the slide. A liquid specimen can be directly deposited on the slide using a dropper. Solid specimens, such as skin scraping, can be placed on the slide before adding a drop of liquid to prepare the wet mount. Sometimes the liquid is simply water, but stains are often added...

Septins are protein filaments forming the cytoskeleton along with the microtubules, microfilaments, intermediate filaments, and other accessory proteins. In 1971 while studying the cell division cycle in mutant Saccharomyces cerevisiae Harwell et al. first identified the septin-related genes playing a crucial role in yeast cytokinesis. Fluorescence microscopy revealed that these proteins localize at the budding neck as rings. These ring-like proteins were then named Septins by John Pringle, and...

Reporter genes are a type of protein-coding gene that are often tagged to a gene of interest. Once inside a target cell, reporter genes usually produce visually identifiable characteristics like fluorescence and luminescence when expressed along with the gene of interest. Thus, reporter genes “report” the presence or absence of genes of interest in an organism, determine the gene expression pattern, or track the physical location of a DNA segment or protein in the cell.
Commonly used reporter...