Cell_motility: a cross-platform, open source application for the study of cell motion paths

Background: Migration is an important aspect of cellular behaviour and is therefore widely studied in cell biology. Numerous components are known to participate in this process in a highly dynamic manner. In order to obtain a better insight in cell migration, mutants or drugs are used and their motive phenotype is then linked with the disturbing factors. One of the typical approaches to study motion paths of individual cells relies on fitting mean square displacements to a persistent random walk function. Since the numerous calculations involved often rely on diverse commercial software packages, the analysis can be expensive, labour-intensive and error-prone work. Additionally, due to the nature of algorithms employed the calculations involved are not readily reproducible without access to the exact software package(s) used. Results: We here present the cell_motility software, an open source Java application under the GNU-GPL license that provides a clear and concise analysis workben...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: Lennart Martens, Geert Monsieur, Christophe Ampe, Kris Gevaert, Joël Vandekerckhove
• Keywords: BMCBI 2006, Cell Motion Data, Motion Paths, Software Packages