Papers from the literature selected by the Nature Biotechnology editors. (Follow us on Twitter, @NatureBiotech #nbtHighlight)

Necroptosis drives motor neuron death in models of both sporadic and familial ALS

Re, D.B. et al. Neuron 81, 1001–1008 (2014)

Detection of circulating tumor DNA in early- and late-stage human malignancies

Bettegowda, C. et al. Sci. Transl. Med. 19, 224ra24 (2014)

Structure-based programming of lymph-node targeting in molecular vaccines

Liu, H. et al. Nature doi:10.1038/nature12978 (16 February 2014)

Highly multiplexed subcellular RNA sequencing in situ

Lee, J.H. et al. Science doi:10.1126/science.1250212 (27 February 2014)

Universal count correction for high-throughput sequencing

Hashimoto, T.B. et al. PLoS: Comput. Biol. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003494 (6 March 2014)

Expanding ester biosynthesis in Escherichia coli

Rodriguez, G.M. et al. Nat. Chem. Biol. doi:10.1038/nchembio.1476 (9 March 2014)