Automated detection of vesicles and exocytosis

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Project Description

The goal of this project is to quantify protein binding to diffraction limited cellular organelles, for example during the assembly of the machinery for exo- or endocytosis. Using live cell TIRF-microscopy and image analysis, we can identify organelles and their behavior (eg membrane fusion), “count” the copy numbers of proteins associated with them, and estimate binding affinities within living cells. We envision to fully automate the analysis for both still images and movies, ideally with similar accuracy as manual detection and scalable for automatic microscopy.