CellMAPtracer: A user-friendly tracking tool for long-term migratory and proliferating cells

Abstract

Background Cell migration is a fundamental cell biological process of key importance in health and disease. Advances in imaging techniques have paved the way to monitor cells motility. An ever-growing collection of computational tools to track cells has improved our ability to analyze moving cells. However, few if any tools let the user supervise and correct cell tracks that are automatically detected. Thus, we developed CellMAPtracer, a tool to track cells in a semi-automated supervised fashion, thereby improving the accuracy and facilitating the long term tracking of migratory and dividing cells. CellMAPtracer is available with a user-friendly graphical user interface and does not require any coding or programming skills.Results We used CellMAPtracer to track fluorescently-labelled BT549 breast cancer cells. It allowed us to track dividing cells and determine the fate of the daughter cells with respect to migration speed or directionality and cell cycle length. Of note, we were able to track multi-daughter divisions, wherein a cell divides and gives rise to more than two cells. We also identified a not previously described speed change in the terminal phase of the cell cycle.Conclusion CellMAPtracer is a software tool for tracking cell migration and proliferation through a user-friendly interface that has a great potential to facilitate new discoveries in cell biology.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.View Full Text