New Tracking Algorithm for the Study of Cell Motility

Mon, 02 Dec 2013 19:00:00 -0500

The new tracking algorithm will allow us to characterize quantitatively the dynamics of dense cell colonies and to identify novel length and timescales that are important for collective cell behavior. Recent research into cell-substrate interactions has examined how single cell motility and protein expression is influenced by nanopatterned substrates, substrates with different stiffnesses, and substrates with different chemical composition. These studies have all, however considered the response of cells to variations in the environment that are stationary in time. In contrast, many inter- and intra-cellular processes occur over a very wide range of timescales: cytoskeletal rearrangements can occur over less than a minute, while changes to gene expression often occurs over hours or days. This suggests that there is an opportunity to tease apart which of these microscopic properties are influencing collective cell motility by changing the substrate properties over time in a controlled, pre-programmed way. In particular, we hypothesize that collective cell motility will be quantitatively different depending on whether an underlying substrate changes topography quickly (over seconds to minutes) or slowly (over hours to days). Our tracking software will allow us to verify this hypothesis.

The project will provide a freely available, transferable software package that accurately tracks variably-stained cells or nuclei through close interactions and divisions. While the contour algorithm is more computationally intensive than existing routines, it fills an important gap in the tracking literature for situations where information is needed over long timescales at high cell densities.