Max-Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics, Dresden, Germany.
Bioinformatics. 2010 Jun 15;26(12):i13-20. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btq190.
The centrosome is a dynamic structure in animal cells that serves as a microtubule organizing center during mitosis and also regulates cell-cycle progression and sets polarity cues. Automated and reliable tracking of centrosomes is essential for genetic screens that study the process of centrosome assembly and maturation in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans.
We have developed a fully automatic system for tracking and measuring fluorescently labeled centrosomes in 3D time-lapse images of early C. elegans embryos. Using a spinning disc microscope, we monitor the centrosome cycle in living embryos from the 1- up to the 16-cell stage at imaging intervals between 30 and 50 s. After establishing the centrosome trajectories with a novel method involving two layers of inference, we also automatically detect the nuclear envelope breakdown in each cell division and recognize the identities of the centrosomes based on the invariant cell lineage of C. elegans. To date, we have tracked centrosomes in over 500 wild type and mutant embryos with almost no manual correction required.
The centrosome tracking software along with test data is freely available at http://publications.mpi-cbg.de/itemPublication.html?documentId=4082.
中心体是动物细胞中的一个动态结构，在有丝分裂过程中充当微管组织中心，还调节细胞周期进程并设定极性提示。自动且可靠的中心体跟踪对于研究秀丽隐杆线虫中中心体组装和成熟过程的遗传筛选至关重要。
我们开发了一种全自动系统，用于跟踪和测量 3D 延时荧光标记的中心体在早期秀丽隐杆线虫胚胎中的图像。使用旋转盘显微镜，我们以 30 到 50 秒的成像间隔，监测活胚胎中从 1 到 16 细胞阶段的中心体周期。在用涉及两层推理的新方法建立中心体轨迹后，我们还可以自动检测每个细胞分裂中的核膜破裂，并根据秀丽隐杆线虫的不变细胞谱系识别中心体的身份。迄今为止，我们已经在 500 多个野生型和突变体胚胎中进行了跟踪，几乎不需要手动校正。
该中心体跟踪软件以及测试数据可在 http://publications.mpi-cbg.de/itemPublication.html?documentId=4082 上免费获取。
