2023 journal article
An unbiased, automated platform for scoring dopaminergic neurodegeneration in C. elegans
PLOS ONE.
Ed(s): P. Lajoie
TL;DR:
An automated, unbiased image processing algorithm is developed that can provide comparative insight into how each exposure affects dopaminergic neurodegeneration patterns and validate the accuracy of the algorithm by comparing code-generated, categorical degeneration results with manually scored dendrites of the same experiments.
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journals.plos.org (publisher PDF)
UN Sustainable Development Goal Categories
3. Good Health and Well-being
(Web of Science)
Source: ORCID
Added: February 1, 2024
Caenorhabditis elegans(C.elegans) has served as a simple model organism to study dopaminergic neurodegeneration, as it enables quantitative analysis of cellular and sub-cellular morphologies in live animals. These isogenic nematodes have a rapid life cycle and transparent body, making high-throughput imaging and evaluation of fluorescently tagged neurons possible. However, the current state-of-the-art method for quantifying dopaminergic degeneration requires researchers to manually examine images and score dendrites into groups of varying levels of neurodegeneration severity, which is time consuming, subject to bias, and limited in data sensitivity. We aim to overcome the pitfalls of manual neuron scoring by developing an automated, unbiased image processing algorithm to quantify dopaminergic neurodegeneration inC.elegans. The algorithm can be used on images acquired with different microscopy setups and only requires two inputs: a maximum projection image of the four cephalic neurons in theC.eleganshead and the pixel size of the user’s camera. We validate the platform by detecting and quantifying neurodegeneration in nematodes exposed to rotenone, cold shock, and 6-hydroxydopamine using 63x epifluorescence, 63x confocal, and 40x epifluorescence microscopy, respectively. Analysis of tubby mutant worms with altered fat storage showed that, contrary to our hypothesis, increased adiposity did not sensitize to stressor-induced neurodegeneration. We further verify the accuracy of the algorithm by comparing code-generated, categorical degeneration results with manually scored dendrites of the same experiments. The platform, which detects 20 different metrics of neurodegeneration, can provide comparative insight into how each exposure affects dopaminergic neurodegeneration patterns.