Ashok Prasad (Colorado State University)
Cell morphology offers a powerful and underutilized lens for understanding cellular identity, behavior, and state. While transcriptomic and proteomic profiling have revolutionized our capacity to characterize cells, quantitative morphological features can provide complementary insights into cell state and function. In this talk, I will present our recent work demonstrating that cells can be robustly classified using a range of morphological metrics derived from microscopy images. I will discuss our ongoing efforts for deeper insight. These include studying the relationship between cell shape, actin structure and nuclear size and shape as well as by developing new morphological measures that are sensitive to the structure and dynamics of intracellular structures, especially the actin cytoskeleton and other dynamic biopolymer networks. We simulate the actin cytoskeleton, incorporating the action of molecular motors and cross-linkers, and look for features that are sensitive to different initial conditions and differences in temporal dynamics. Ultimately, we seek to build a framework in which cellular morphology is treated as a high-dimensional, information-rich signature of cell state. Our work is part of a broader vision of morphology-based phenotyping as a bridge between structure and function in living systems.
Contact : W. Ahmed