Fast and simple tool for the quantification of biofilm-embedded cells sub-populations from fluorescent microscopic images

PLoS One. 2018 May 1;13(5):e0193267. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0193267. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

Fluorescent staining is a common tool for both quantitative and qualitative assessment of pro- and eukaryotic cells sub-population fractions by using microscopy and flow cytometry. However, direct cell counting by flow cytometry is often limited, for example when working with cells rigidly adhered either to each other or to external surfaces like bacterial biofilms or adherent cell lines and tissue samples. An alternative approach is provided by using fluorescent microscopy and confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM), which enables the evaluation of fractions of cells subpopulations in a given sample. For the quantitative assessment of cell fractions in microphotographs, we suggest a simple two-step algorithm that combines single cells selection and the statistical analysis. To facilitate the first step, we suggest a simple procedure that supports finding the balance between the detection threshold and the typical size of single cells based on objective cell size distribution analysis. Based on a series of experimental measurements performed on bacterial and eukaryotic cells under various conditions, we show explicitly that the suggested approach effectively accounts for the fractions of different cell sub-populations (like the live/dead staining in our samples) in all studied cases that are in good agreement with manual cell counting on microphotographs and flow cytometry data. This algorithm is implemented as a simple software tool that includes an intuitive and user-friendly graphical interface for the initial adjustment of algorithm parameters to the microphotographs analysis as well as for the sequential analysis of homogeneous series of similar microscopic images without further user intervention. The software tool entitled BioFilmAnalyzer is freely available online at https://bitbucket.org/rogex/biofilmanalyzer/downloads/.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Bacteria / growth & development*
  • Biofilms / growth & development*
  • Colonic Neoplasms / pathology*
  • Flow Cytometry / methods*
  • Humans
  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / methods*
  • Microscopy, Fluorescence / methods*
  • Single-Cell Analysis / methods
  • Software
  • Tumor Cells, Cultured

Grants and funding

The financial support of this work was provided by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation (assignment 2.5475.2017/6.7 to MIB), by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation and DAAD (Mikhail Lomonosov Russian-German bilateral travel grant to ISS), by the Russian Science Foundation (project No. 15-14-00046 to ARK) and by the Program of competitive development of Kazan Federal University. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.