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Automated velocity mapping of migrating cell populations (AVeMap)

Nature Methods volume 9, pages 1081–1083 (2012)Cite this article

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Abstract

Characterizing the migration of a population of cells remains laborious and somewhat subjective. Advances in genetics and robotics allow researchers to perform many experiments in parallel, but analyzing the large sets of data remains a bottleneck. Here we describe a rapid, fully automated correlation-based method for cell migration analysis, compatible with standard video microscopy. This method allows for the computation of quantitative migration parameters via an extensive dynamic mapping of cell displacements.

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Figure 1: Schematic of AVeMap.
Figure 2: AVeMap analysis of migrating monolayers.

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Acknowledgements

It's a pleasure to thank L. Selfors, K. Simpson and J. Brugge (Harvard University) for giving us full access to their data. We thank A. Gautreau (Laboratoire d'Enzymologie et de Biologie Structurale, Gif-sur-Yvette) for the gift of the anti-Wave2 antibody, J.K. Sveen for fruitful discussions and H. Yevick for a critical reading of the manuscript. Financial support from the Association pour la Recherche sur le Cancer, the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (project IntegRal), the Association Christelle Bouillot, the Ligue Contre le Cancer and the Institut Curie Program 'Modèles Cellulaires' is gratefully acknowledged.

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Author notes

  1. Maxime Deforet and Maria Carla Parrini: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire Physico-chimie Curie, Unité Mixte de Recherche 168, Centre de Recherche, Institut Curie, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, et Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France

    Maxime Deforet, Laurence Petitjean, Axel Buguin & Pascal Silberzan

  2. Analysis of Transduction Pathways Group, Unité 830, Centre de Recherche, Institut Curie et Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, Paris, France

    Maria Carla Parrini, Marco Biondini & Jacques Camonis

Authors
  1. Maxime Deforet
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  2. Maria Carla Parrini
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  3. Laurence Petitjean
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  4. Marco Biondini
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  6. Jacques Camonis
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  7. Pascal Silberzan
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Jacques Camonis or Pascal Silberzan.

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Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Text and Figures

Supplementary Figures 1–9, Supplementary Tables 1 and 2 and Supplementary Discussions 1 and 2 (PDF 1789 kb)

Supplementary Software

AVeMap source code. (ZIP 1060 kb)

HEK control.

Wound-healing with control HEK-HT cells. Total film duration: 16 h. Acquisitions were made every 15 min. Images were acquired in phase-contrast mode. Total width of the observation field = 1.68 mm. (MOV 5112 kb)

HEK siWave2 (5 nM).

Wound-healing with HEK-HT cells depleted of Wave2 (siRNA concentration of 5 nM). Total film duration: 16 h. Acquisitions were made every 15 min. Images were acquired in phase-contrast mode. Total width of the observation field = 1.68 mm. (MOV 5360 kb)

HEK siWave2 (2 nM).

Wound-healing with HEK-HT cells depleted of Wave2 (siRNA concentration of 2 nM). Total film duration: 16 h. Acquisitions were made every 15 min. Images were acquired in phase-contrast mode. Total width of the observation field = 1.68 mm. (MOV 8705 kb)

A549 control.

Wound-healing with A549 cells. Total film duration: 16 h. Acquisitions were made every 15 min. Images were acquired in phase-contrast mode. Total width of the observation field = 1.68 mm. (MOV 5256 kb)

A549 TGF-β.

Wound-healing with A549 cells in the presence of TGF-β. Total film duration: 16 h. Acquisitions were made every 15 min. Images were acquired in phase-contrast mode. Total width of the observation field = 1.68 mm. (MOV 6858 kb)

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Deforet, M., Parrini, M., Petitjean, L. et al. Automated velocity mapping of migrating cell populations (AVeMap). Nat Methods 9, 1081–1083 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2209

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