This issue marks the 10-year anniversary of Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, and, indeed, of Nature Reviews. To celebrate this occasion we have a retrospective Research Highlights section this month, which reflects on how the field of molecular cell biology has matured during the past decade. With the help of our highlights advisors and other key experts in the field, to whom we are indebted, we have selected ten breakthroughs for discussion — those that provided new tools and techniques and those that altered our concept of how the basic properties of a cell are determined. Of course, the topics and papers chosen are not intended to be comprehensive and must be appreciated in the context of the numerous contributions by other groups that surrounded these studies.

We also launch a new Article Series in this issue, in honour of our anniversary, which revisits key topics that were covered in the first year of Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology and highlights the shifts and advances made since that time. The first of these, by Kai Simons and Mathias J. Gerl, on page 688, discusses how research into lipid rafts has been reinvigorated and previous controversies laid to rest with the aid of new techniques. We hope that this, and the other articles in the 10-year anniversary series (www.nature.com/nrm/series/10-anniversary), will provide timely reminders over the coming months of how far the field has come in a decade.

Accompanying this issue is a Poster by Michael Z. Lin, Atsushi Miyawaki and Roger Y. Tsien, which provides a user's guide to the range of fluorescent proteins and sensors available and their key cellular applications. This Poster (www.nature.com/nrm/posters/fluorescent) was produced with generous support from Semrock and Andor Technology plc.