Navigating gene expression with MERFISH – the Google Maps of biology

A new, easy-to-use platform to streamline MERFISH experiments – a method to analyze the molecular composition and spatial information of cells with significantly increased multiplexing capabilities compared to previous methods – has been developed, paving the way towards a vastly improved understanding of tissue biology. Multiplexed error-robust fluorescence in situ hybridization, or MERFISH for short, was developed by researchers at the Zhuang Research Lab (Harvard University; MA, USA), and is a single-cell transcriptomics imaging method that measures the spatial distribution of RNA species in cells.