Single Cell Motility and Migration Analysis Services
Creative Biolabs offers novel cellular strategies and services to drive and coordinate single cell motility and migration analysis.
Cell Motility and Migration
Cell migration is a critical process in the growth and maintenance of healthy organisms, such as during wound healing and cancer metastasis. As a result, this process is complicated, and it is frequently influenced by a wide range of internal and external stimuli. Mechanical forces acting on the cell, environmental parameters like temperature and pH, the presence of chemical factors, and the extent of cell-cell interaction defined by the local cell density are all examples of recognized external influences. Internally, cell motility is influenced by the cell's overall health, mitotic phase, and degree of differentiation in stem cells, among other factors.
Fig.1 Tracking cells with imaging. (Pushkarsky, 2014)
Single Cell Motility and Migration Analysis Methods
A variety of in vitro approaches have been used to quantify the process of eukaryotic cell migration in varied microenvironments. These methods generally fall into two major categories: the first category includes techniques that monitor the average activity of a large population of cells, such as traditional wound healing experiments and Boyden chamber techniques; the second involves monitoring individual cell motility, which is usually done with time-lapse video-microscopy.
Single Cell Motility and Migration Analysis Workflow
Single cell motility and migration analysis are important since they may be used to exclude a variety of variables that influence wound healing and Boyden chamber assays, such as cell-cell adhesion and proliferation. Furthermore, cells can be plated immediately after being withdrawn from culture, whereas cells in wound-healing or Electric Cell-substrate Impedance Sensing (ECISTM) tests must first be grown to confluence. Experimenters can control the extracellular matrix (ECM) components, which are important variables in migration studies, by seeding cells just before time-lapse microscopy.
With the addition of microscopes with automated stages, as well as large gains in processing power and data storage, it is now possible to generate massive amounts of picture data in an automated, or semi-automatic, manner. Data analysis is currently the bottleneck in imaging research, not data capture. Computer-aided image analysis, or a semi-automated quantitative technique, is an excellent way to deal with complex processes like cell behavior quickly. In the field, manual cell speed tracking is still the gold standard.
Fig.2 Schematic workflow of the single-cell motility and migration analysis. (Masuzzo, 2017)
Our Featured Service
- Chemotaxis tests in 2D and 3D with rapid- and slow-migrating cells
- Inverted microscopy is used to image live cells
- Neutrophils, lymphocytes, and monocytes chemotaxis
- 3D chemotaxis of leukocytes or cancer cells in an ECM-like matrix
- Tumor cell invasion tests
- Measurements of adherent and non-adherent cells' chemotaxis
Single Cell Microfluidic Invasive Assay Service
Creative Biolabs offers single cell microfluidic invasive assay services to better understand the migration of hundreds of individual cells simultaneously.
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Single Cell Chemotaxis-Based Microfluidic Selection Service
Creative Biolabs offers single cell chemotaxis-based microfluidic selection services to study the migration behavior of heterogeneous cancer cells. These assays employ microfluidic chips which can select and sort heterogeneous cells based on chemotactic phenotype.
Learn MorePublished Data
| Paper Title | Single-cell transcriptome analysis of avian neural crest migration reveals signatures of invasion and molecular transitions |
| Journal | eLife |
| IF | 8.140 |
| Published | 2017 |
| Abstract | In this study, they identify and establish hierarchical links between cell position and time-specific transcriptional patterns, which is the first single-cell transcriptome analysis of cranial neural crest cell migration at three progressive phases in the chick. They discovered a novel transcriptional signature of the most invasive neural crest Trailblazer cells which is stable throughout migration and enriched for almost 900 genes. |
| Result | They employed the extremely invasive neural crest as a model to study cell migration during embryonic development. They focused on cranial neural crest cell migration and used the strengths of the avian embryo to perform manual cell isolation at various developmental stages, bulk and single-determine gene expression profiles within cells of a typical migratory stream over time, and bulk and single-cell RNcell RNA-seq to dA-seq to determine gene expression profiles within cells of a typical migratory stream over time. The researchers aimed to find new transcriptional signatures and molecular transitions associated with subpopulations of cells in a cranial neural crest cell migratory stream and see how these transcriptional signatures evolved as the cells moved through different microenvironments. This knowledge could contribute to a better understanding of the molecular characteristics that underpin observed complex neural crest cell activities, as well as a mechanistic explanation for directed and collective cell migration processes. |
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Fig.3 Newly emerging neural crest segregate into discrete groups representing a transition from EMT to directed migration. (Morrison, 2017)
Creative Biolabs offers single cell motility and migration analysis services and powerful analyses for your research. Please contact us for more information. Our experts will help design an optimal solution for your project and troubleshoot for you throughout the whole process.
References
- Pushkarsky, I.; et al. Automated single-cell motility analysis on a chip using lensfree microscopy. Scientific reports. 2014; 4(1): 1-9.
- Masuzzo, P.; et al. An end-to-end software solution for the analysis of high-throughput single-cell migration data. Sci Rep. 2017; 7, 42383.
- Morrison, J.A.; et al. Single-cell transcriptome analysis of avian neural crest migration reveals signatures of invasion and molecular transitions. Elife. 2017; 6: e28415.
