How the shape and organization of cells are achieved is a question of both fundamental and potential clinical interest. It is typically addressed by analyzing overall cell morphology or by studying the location of specific intracellular structures with respect to other landmarks within the cell. Apte and Marshall now describe a general statistical method to quantify cellular organization. They define a test parameter that describes the distribution uniformity of intracellular structures—modeled as points located at their structure's centroid—within the cell. This parameter may theoretically be applied in two or three dimensions and can be compared among different populations of interest. The authors demonstrate the method on simulated data and quantitatively confirm cellular disorganization in Chlamydomonas mutants with disrupted centrioles.
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Quantifying cellular organization. Nat Methods 10, 13 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2312
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2312
