High-Resolution Imaging and Morphological Phenotyping of C. elegans through Stable Robotic Sample Rotation and...

Area of Science:

• Biophysics
• Developmental Biology
• Genetics

Background:

• Accurate 3D morphological profiling of model organisms like Caenorhabditis elegans is crucial for genetic analysis and disease modeling.
• Challenges in C. elegans phenotyping include image resolution loss and complex 3D reconstruction of irregularly shaped microscale samples.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop a robust robotic system for contactless, stable rotation of C. elegans for multi-view fluorescent imaging.
• To enable precise 3D reconstruction and morphological phenotyping of C. elegans, overcoming current imaging limitations.

Main Methods:

• A novel robotic system was engineered for contactless, uniform rotation of C. elegans.
• Multi-view fluorescent imaging was performed, followed by machine learning-based 3D reconstruction.
• The system was applied to C. elegans at embryonic and adult stages, including mutant strains.

Main Results:

• Precise 3D reconstructions of C. elegans were achieved for the first time.
• Accurate and comprehensive 3D morphological phenotyping of mutant strains was enabled.
• A significant genetic interaction between UNC-75/CELF and MBL-1/MBNL RNA binding proteins was identified.

Conclusions:

• The developed robotic system facilitates high-resolution 3D imaging and morphological phenotyping of C. elegans.
• This method provides quantitative readouts for investigating genetic variations and disease mechanisms, particularly for neurological and muscular disorders.
• The approach is broadly applicable to other biological samples such as zebrafish and Drosophila larvae.