A morphometric analysis of cell shape and cytoskeletal form

The morphology of spread cells carries information about cell state at a single cell level. We have imaged thousands of cells in different experimental conditions and developed a large number of morphological parameters to quantify cell shape and cytoskeletal morphology. Using these images we demonstrated that cell morphology at the single cell level is a sensitive readout of cell state, and lower-dimensional projections can identify similar and dissimilar changes in cellular morphology[1]. However, morphological features capture aspects of the structure and organization of the cytoskeleton, which are inextricably linked with the shape a cell acquires on a surface. We extend our previous work to study the interelations between cell and nuclear shape and cytoskeletal organization. Using data-driven predictive modeling we show that morphological parameters are inter-related, and provide mechanistic insight into the determination of shape and the relation between shape and function.
[1] Alizadeh et. al. Cellular morphological features are predictive markers of cancer cell state, Computers in Biology and Medicine Oct. 2020