Growth phenotype screening of Schizosaccharomyces pombe using a Lensless microscope

The Lensless microscope has a large field of view and allows the capture of the diffraction pattern from a large number of cells simultaneously. A simple algorithm to measure intensity changes in the Airy Disc First Fringe (ADFF) has been derived to follow the growth characteristics of the unicellular yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. The performance of the algorithm is calibrated using comparison between optical image and ADFF analysis of polystyrene microspheres with known dimensions and has an accuracy of 5% over all lengths above the diffraction-limited measurements. We have observed the growth characteristics of S. pombe for N=100 cells to determine the growth phenotype distributions of Length (L(t=0)) and width (W(t=0)) on arrival at the surface, lag phase adjustment to the new growth conditions (B), the length at birth, LB, and cell cycle length, tcell. The observed cell width distribution has a median width of 3.9 (±0.1) µm, as expected, but a non-normal distribution. Similarly, all growth parameters studied, L(t=0), LB and cell cycle time are phenotypes with non-normal distributions but with medians consistent with the literature values.