Mangeol Pierre, Prevo Bram, Peterman Erwin J G
Department of Physics and Astronomy and LaserLaB Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam NH 1081HV, Netherlands.
Department of Physics and Astronomy and LaserLaB Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam NH 1081HV, Netherlands
Mol Biol Cell. 2016 Jun 15;27(12):1948-57. doi: 10.1091/mbc.E15-06-0404. Epub 2016 Apr 20.
Dynamic processes are ubiquitous and essential in living cells. To properly understand these processes, it is imperative to measure them in a time-dependent way and analyze the resulting data quantitatively, preferably with automated tools. Kymographs are single images that represent the motion of dynamic processes and are widely used in live-cell imaging. Although they contain the full range of dynamics, it is not straightforward to extract this quantitative information in a reliable way. Here we present two complementary, publicly available software tools, KymographClear and KymographDirect, that have the power to reveal detailed insight in dynamic processes. KymographClear is a macro toolset for ImageJ to generate kymographs that provides automatic color coding of the different directions of movement. KymographDirect is a stand-alone tool to extract quantitative information from kymographs obtained from a wide range of dynamic processes in an automated way, with high accuracy and reliability. We discuss the concepts behind these software tools, validate them using simulated data, and test them on experimental data. We show that these tools can be used to extract motility parameters from a diverse set of cell-biological experiments in an automated and user-friendly way.
动态过程在活细胞中无处不在且至关重要。为了恰当地理解这些过程,必须以时间依赖的方式对其进行测量,并对所得数据进行定量分析,最好使用自动化工具。波形图是表示动态过程运动的单张图像,广泛应用于活细胞成像。尽管它们包含了完整的动态范围,但要以可靠的方式提取这些定量信息并非易事。在此,我们展示了两个互补的、公开可用的软件工具,即KymographClear和KymographDirect,它们能够揭示动态过程的详细信息。KymographClear是用于ImageJ的宏工具集,用于生成波形图,可对不同运动方向进行自动颜色编码。KymographDirect是一个独立工具,能够以自动化方式从广泛的动态过程中获取的波形图中提取定量信息,具有高精度和可靠性。我们讨论了这些软件工具背后的概念,使用模拟数据对其进行验证,并在实验数据上对其进行测试。我们表明,这些工具可用于以自动化且用户友好的方式从各种细胞生物学实验中提取运动参数。