Comparative study of contact repulsion in control and mutant macrophages using a novel interaction detection

Abstract

This paper compares the contact-repulsion movement of mutant and wild-type macrophages using a novel interaction detection mechanism. The migrating macrophages are observed in Drosophila embryos. The study is carried out by a framework called macrosight, which analyses the movement and interaction of migrating macrophages. The framework incorporates a segmentation and tracking algorithm into analysing motion characteristics of cells after contact. In this particular study, the interactions between cells is characterised in the case of control embryos and Shot3 mutants, where the cells have been altered to suppress a specific protein, looking to understand what drives the movement. Statistical significance between control and mutant cells was found when comparing the direction of motion after contact in specific conditions. Such discoveries provide insights for future developments in combining biological experiments to computational analysis. Cell Segmentation, Cell Tracking, Macrophages, Cell Shape, Contact Analysis