Method Rapidly Reconstructs Animal's Development Cell By Cell

An anonymous reader writes Researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Janelia Research Campus have developed software that can track each and every cell in a developing embryo. The software will allow a researcher to pick out a single cell at any point in development and trace its life backward and forward during the embryo's growth. Philipp Keller, a group leader at Janelia says: "We want to reconstruct the elemental building plan of animals, tracking each cell from very early development until late stages, so that we know everything that has happened in terms of cell movement and cell division. In particular, we want to understand how the nervous system forms. Ultimately, we would like to collect the developmental history of every cell in the nervous system and link that information to the cell's final function. For this purpose, we need to be able to follow individual cells on a fairly large scale and over a long period of time."

Re:Wow

[i kan reed]

It's only really a concern if the cell runs Linux.

Re:What?

[Anonymous Coward]

It only tracks the nuclei (which will provide very little information about a nervous system) from existing image data. It is not currently not even possible to image how the final nervous system of a fruit fly is setup so that this software could be run. They are too thick and opaque for any current microscopy technique to use while alive. Philipp Keller also developed a microscopy technique for imaging this type of data. I've tried using it on flies, and it doesn't work.