The 3 ways to look at CYTOO CELLebrate videos
One of my favorite videos is CYTOO CELLebrate
a fun take on imaging single cells constrained by micropatterns of defined geometry.
The reason I like these micropatterned coverglasses or multiwell plates (http://www.cytoo.com) is they enable a population of cells to be made into what I will call morphological clones, or morpho-clones for short. the big payoff is that only a few cells need to be "added" together to get useful results. As an analogy, imagine trying to compute the average shape of 100 of my home baked free hand dropped chocolate chip cookies, to gingerbread person cookies made with a mold.
Schauer et al (2010) Fig 1F, illustrates graphically that at about 20 micropatterned cells have been 'added", the curves (2D, 3D) asymptote = there is no need to acquire more cells (unless interested in outliers, such as during cell division).
Another look from their 2013 chapter, showing nonconstrained (B, leftmost) with micropatterned (rest of figure).
Four endosomal markers are shown below (from a CYTOO marketing piece, basically pseudo-colorized version of a figure in Schauer et al 2010). Rab6 (right most panel) is mostly Golgi apparatus (and some anterior peripheral and distal tail at bottom), whereas the other three are "punctate" but different -- obvious from the images, but would be less obvious if the endosomes were chocolate chips in my unconstrained cookie cells.
I think one of the flaws in the way most high throughput screens and high content screens is that the cells are more like my cookies, and so have a lot of variability. The CYTOO founders clearly think that "constraints are good" and have multiwell plates with micropatterns in them.
CYTOO and customers have posted additional videos.
Studying intracellular trafficking pathways with probabilistic density maps.
Schauer K, Duong T, Gomes-Santos CS, Goud B. Methods Cell Biol. 2013;118:325-43. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-417164-0.00020-3.
PMID:24295316
Probabilistic density maps to study global endomembrane organization.
Schauer K, Duong T, Bleakley K, Bardin S, Bornens M, Goud B. Nat Methods. 2010 Jul;7(7):560-6. doi: 10.1038/nmeth.1462.
PMID:20512144
Available for download from:
p.s. other companies, and research labs, have generated and used micropatterned coverglasses and plates. I like CYTOO because t they were the first to in this niche with a cool music videdo.
