As Phillip Sharp, Tyler Jacks and Susan Hockfield of MIT posit in a 2016 report [1]: “The life sciences are in the midst of a revolution… The Convergence Revolution promises to enhance quality of life worldwide … as a result of the sharing of methods and ideas by chemists, physicists, computer scientists, engineers, mathematicians, and life scientists across multiple fields and industries. It is the integration of insights and approaches from historically distinct scientific and technological disciplines.” Perhaps nowhere is this both more apparent and more needed than in taking advantage of the rapid expansion of the RNA biosciences universe and the resulting opportunities for translating discoveries into precision medicines [2]. Converging technological advances, ranging from single-cell RNA sequencing to single-molecule particle tracking at super-resolution, are laying the foundation for reaching an entirely new level of insight into cellular physiology that eluded us just a few years ago [3]. Beyond the emerging catalogues of cellular contents, mechanistic studies of the diverse modes of action of RNAs and their interaction partners are handing us the keys for accelerating progress toward shaping our own destiny. The better we understand the scope and limitations of these new tools, the better we will be equipped to wield them effectively.
Read full editorial in the journal Methods : Convergence of science and technology: fluorescent resolution of single RNA molecules