An imaging analysis protocol to trace, quantify, and model multi-signal neuron morphology

Sumit Nanda; Shatabdi Bhattacharjee; Daniel N Cox; Giorgio A Ascoli

doi:10.1016/j.xpro.2021.100567

An imaging analysis protocol to trace, quantify, and model multi-signal neuron morphology

STAR Protoc. 2021 Jun 2;2(2):100567. doi: 10.1016/j.xpro.2021.100567. eCollection 2021 Jun 18.

Authors

Sumit Nanda¹, Shatabdi Bhattacharjee², Daniel N Cox², Giorgio A Ascoli^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Center for Neural Informatics, Structures, & Plasticity and Neuroscience Program, Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA.
² Neuroscience Institute, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA.
³ Bioengineering Department, Volgenau School of Engineering, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22032, USA.

Abstract

We describe how to reconstruct and quantify multi-signal neuronal morphology, using the dendritic distributions of microtubules and F-actin in sensory neurons from fly larvae as examples. We then provide a detailed procedure to analyze channel-specific morphometrics from these enhanced reconstructions. To illustrate applications, we demonstrate how to run a cytoskeleton-constrained simulation of dendritic tree generation and explain its validation against experimental data. This protocol is applicable to any species, developmental stage, brain region, cell class, branching process, and signal type. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please refer to Nanda et al. (2020).

Keywords: Bioinformatics; Cell Biology; Microscopy; Neuroscience.

Publication types

Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural

MeSH terms

Animals
Cytoskeleton / metabolism
Dendrites
Drosophila
Female
Male
Sensory Receptor Cells / cytology*

Abstract

Publication types

MeSH terms

Grants and funding