This issue features a duo of attractive covers by scientists in Germany. 

The outside front cover was provided by Irmgard Merfort and Willi Bannwarth and coworkers at the University of Freiburg. In their paper, the team report a feasibility study for a new concept to detect a DNA binding protein based on a DNA triple helix formation in combination with a fluorescence resonance energy transfer. The new principle avoids expensive antibodies and radioactivity and might have implications for assays of other DNA binding proteins. 

The inside front cover illustrates the work by Michael Gütschow, at the University of Bonn, and colleagues. Gütschow's team have prepared and characterised a high-affinity, fluorescent cholinesterase inhibitor. Its intriguing properties are highlighted by the discovery that it binds to amyloid structures in brain samples from mice and humans affected by Alzheimer's disease. 

In the Emerging Area, Roger Rasberry and Ken Shimizu, from the University of South Carolina, Columbia, US, discuss systems with molecular memory based on restricted rotation with a focus on atropisomer N-arylimides.

In this issue's Hot Article, an international team of researchers lead by Shiki Yagai, at Chiba University, Japan, has stumbled across some unique coil-shaped nanostructures when investigating photoresponsive functional assemblies.