Motion Analysis of Living Cells

Edited by:
  • David R. Soll &
  • Deborah Wessels
Wiley: 1998. Pp.298 £115, $150

Cell behaviour is suddenly a hot topic. Stimulated by the mapping of the human genome, cell biologists are searching for an equally systematic approach to assigning function to gene products, and the motion analysis of living cells is a promising candidate. A large part of a cell's active genome, coding for a vast complex of signalling and regulating agents, as well as for the components of the motile machinery itself, has a potentially measurable influence on cell motility.

Until now, the stumbling block in investigating these effects has been the technical difficulty of detecting and characterizing subtle changes in cell motility, but the analysis of cell motion has now found a fairy godmother. Computer-assisted microscopy has transformed it from a painstaking and tedious chore into an elegant method of data collection and analysis. This new volume, edited by David R. Soll and Deborah Wessels, reveals the recent upsurge of ever more sophisticated ways of characterizing cell behaviour and gives a glimpse into their often stunning visual appeal. After years of obscurity and neglect, Cinderella has finally been invited to the Cell Biology Ball.

The coverage of this multi-author work is very broad, ranging from bacterial chemotaxis and actin-based propulsion of bacterial pathogens to neural crest migration, growth-cone motility and tumour metastasis. Indeed, the topics are so disparate that it is difficult to discern a common thread. Even the theme of motion analysis indicated by the title has not been adhered to by all of the authors, although there is certainly enough of this to make the book a valuable source of methods for quantifying many aspects of cell motility.

The editors' own contributions on the motile dynamics of Dictyostelium amoebae reveal the amazing wealth of quantitative detail that can now be extracted from moving cells by computer-assisted microscopy. One table lists 400 numbers that were generated by the movement of a single amoeba during three minutes! This would have pleased Lord Kelvin, who once said that if one cannot reduce one's knowledge of the natural world to numbers then it is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind. It is a shame he is no longer around to interpret them.

When the ball is over and the glittering coach turns once again into a pumpkin, Prince Charming must discover whose foot will fit into the glass slipper. Few of the techniques described have sufficient scope to qualify as general approaches, and only one paper tackles the important problem of analysing the movement of cultured vertebrate cells. These cells are often so thinly spread in culture that their automatic recognition by computer presents a particular challenge, and the authors have developed a sophisticated, semi-automated procedure for detecting cell contours. If I were less modest, I would draw their attention to a fully automatic and intrinsically more accurate approach, based on phase-shifting interference microscopy, that has been in routine use in my own laboratory for several years.

The main argument for developing fully automated methods is that the immense diversity presented by cultured vertebrate cells, even if derived from a single clone, dictates that around a hundred or more cells must be recorded over many hours to detect a subtle experimental effect. Even semi-automated methods can soon become wearisome when dealing with the many thousands of cell outlines generated in a single experiment.

Although the automated analysis of cell behaviour is still very much in its infancy, it is clear from these pages that it is already beginning to make an impact at the core of cell research. Moreover, I suspect that it will soon make a much more profound contribution to our knowledge, not only of how cells move, but of how they communicate with each other, respond to their environment and generally cooperate to build and maintain whole organisms. More distant applications may even include routine clinical screening and diagnosis. In time, this book may well be seen as a herald of a new era in cell biology.