Morphological plasticity is critical to organism development - as exemplified by the reversible conversion of embryonic non-migratory epithelial cells to motile mesenchymal cells required for tissue Morphological plasticity is critical to organism development as exemplified by the reversible conversion of embryonic non-migratory epithelial cells to motile mesenchymal cells required for tissue positioning and organization. The size of the shape space a cell has the potential to explore reflects its morphological plasticity. Highly plastic cells explore large regions of shape space when compared with cells with stable morphologies. In adult organisms, the shape space available to most differentiated cells is relatively limited, serving to enforce tissue architecture and function. However, during the pathogenesis of diseases such as metastatic cancers, cells can re-acquire the ability to explore shape space and thus find a shape that is suitable for migration and invasion. At present, there is little understanding of how the size and topology of cellular shape space is determined by genetic and environmental factors. To identify how genes contribute to the size and topology of shape space we developed high-throughput imaging and computational methods to describe the morphological complexity of cellular populations and applied them to data sets generated by systematic RNA interference (RNAi) screens in Drosophila Kc cells. We first determined whether cells have discrete shapes or whether shape is a continuous variable. Subsequently we identified genes that contribute to the exploration of shape space in Kc cells, as well as those that regulate the topology of shape space itself. Finally we isolated a conserved gene network that regulates contractility and protrusion in Drosophila as well as mouse and human melanoma cells. This demonstrates that the analysis of morphological complexity provides new insights into the signalling networks regulating cell shape. well as mouse and human melanoma cells. This demonstrates that the analysis of morphological complexity provides new insights into the signalling networks regulating cell shape.
A screen for morphological complexity identifies regulators of switch-like transitions between discrete cell shapes Zheng Yin, Amine Sadok, Heba Sailem, Afshan McCarthy, Xiaofeng Xia, Fuhai Li, Mar Arias Garcia, Louise Evans, Alexis R. Barr, Norbert Perrimon, Christopher J. Marshall, Stephen T. C. Wong & Chris Bakal , Nature Cell Biology 15, 860-871 (2013)
Go to code\G_CELLIQ_IMAGE_PROCESSING_TOOLBOX folder.
Run Demo.m with Matlab
The input cell images are in the Input folder.
The results will be generated in Output folder.
Yin, Zheng
Email: ZYin@houstonmethodist.org
Wong, Stephen (PI)
Email: STWong@houstonmethodist.org