ImarisCell: A software to quantitatively analyze intracellular processes in living cells.

• Research unit: INNOSUISSE
• Project number: 9325.2;5 PFLS-LS

Short description (German)

ImarisCell: A software to quantitatively analyze intracellular processes in living cells.

Short description (English)

ImarisCell: A software to quantitatively analyze intracellular processes in living cells.

Abstract (German)

We research and develop a software to visualize, segment, and analyze structural and dynamic components of live cells which are essential for their functional characterization. The software is able to compute and display cell boundaries, cell nuclei, and vesicles in 3D and over time. We address the needs of biologists to quantify cell behaviour by performing cell-specific measurements, such as spatial distribution of vesicles relative to cell boundary in 3D and over time. The new module enables automatic characterization of the phenotypes of large numbers of cells, making it particularly well suited to analyze image data from high-content screening. In order to support such applications, we also develop a software interface for the automatic processing of large numbers of images. This interface will be able to produce the same measurements as the interactive Imaris module in a fully automated manner.We finally apply the developed tools to analyze endocytosis of cargo and viruses through the plasma membrane. We develop quantitative feature vectors for this analysis that describe cargo and virus endocytosis.,. They reveal specific phenotypic functional modules of genes in the host cell, providing links between the systems' properties and the underlying molecular wiring of endocytosis and virus entry.

Abstract (English)

We research and develop a software to visualize, segment, and analyze structural and dynamic components of live cells which are essential for their functional characterization. The software is able to compute and display cell boundaries, cell nuclei, and vesicles in 3D and over time. We address the needs of biologists to quantify cell behaviour by performing cell-specific measurements, such as spatial distribution of vesicles relative to cell boundary in 3D and over time. The new module enables automatic characterization of the phenotypes of large numbers of cells, making it particularly well suited to analyze image data from high-content screening. In order to support such applications, we also develop a software interface for the automatic processing of large numbers of images. This interface will be able to produce the same measurements as the interactive Imaris module in a fully automated manner.We finally apply the developed tools to analyze endocytosis of cargo and viruses through the plasma membrane. We develop quantitative feature vectors for this analysis that describe cargo and virus endocytosis.,. They reveal specific phenotypic functional modules of genes in the host cell, providing links between the systems' properties and the underlying molecular wiring of endocytosis and virus entry.