eLife (Dec 2015)

Untwisting the Caenorhabditis elegans embryo

  • Ryan Patrick Christensen,
  • Alexandra Bokinsky,
  • Anthony Santella,
  • Yicong Wu,
  • Javier Marquina-Solis,
  • Min Guo,
  • Ismar Kovacevic,
  • Abhishek Kumar,
  • Peter W Winter,
  • Nicole Tashakkori,
  • Evan McCreedy,
  • Huafeng Liu,
  • Matthew McAuliffe,
  • William Mohler,
  • Daniel A Colón-Ramos,
  • Zhirong Bao,
  • Hari Shroff

DOI
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.10070
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 4

Abstract

Read online

The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans possesses a simple embryonic nervous system with few enough neurons that the growth of each cell could be followed to provide a systems-level view of development. However, studies of single cell development have largely been conducted in fixed or pre-twitching live embryos, because of technical difficulties associated with embryo movement in late embryogenesis. We present open-source untwisting and annotation software (http://mipav.cit.nih.gov/plugin_jws/mipav_worm_plugin.php) that allows the investigation of neurodevelopmental events in late embryogenesis and apply it to track the 3D positions of seam cell nuclei, neurons, and neurites in multiple elongating embryos. We also provide a tutorial describing how to use the software (Supplementary file 1) and a detailed description of the untwisting algorithm (Appendix). The detailed positional information we obtained enabled us to develop a composite model showing movement of these cells and neurites in an 'average' worm embryo. The untwisting and cell tracking capabilities of our method provide a foundation on which to catalog C. elegans neurodevelopment, allowing interrogation of developmental events in previously inaccessible periods of embryogenesis.

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