Researchers at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, using an image analysis tool developed at ORNL, discovered that a deficit in Rb, a gene that suppresses retinoblastoma tumors, plays a role in retinal cancer. Retinoblastoma, a cancer that usually develops in children age 2 or younger, results from a mutation in a gene controlling cell division.
The specialized tracing algorithms enable neurobiologists to analyze nerve cells and detect retinal abnormalities in mice at the cellular level.
“Previously, this was a very time-consuming and labor-intensive process,” said Measurement Science and Systems Engineering Division’s Ryan Kerekes. “Existing commercial software tools were not tuned to this particular data and produced too many tracing errors.” Other tools can analyze only a few cells in sufficient detail, he said, whereas the ORNL tool is sufficiently accurate to analyze thousands of developing neurons.
The results showed that horizontal neurons deficient in Rb exhibited abnormalities in the organization of their dendrites (branches of neurons) within a certain number of days after birth.
Kerekes, along with MSSED’s Shaun Gleason and Mahmut Karakaya, developed the software and the automated tool that traces the dendritic arbor, the intricate network of branches emanating from each neuron. Researchers use the tracing tool to draw a line along each branch in the neuron’s network, measuring its length, angle, and other parameters.
The image analysis work at ORNL is supported by seed money and by St. Jude. Overall project funding comes from the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Fogarty International Research Collaboration Award, American Cancer Society, Research to Prevent Blindness Foundation, and American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities.
Reference: Martins, et al. 2011. "Retinoblastoma (Rb) regulates laminar dendritic arbor reorganization in retinal horizontal neurons," PNAS 108(52), 21111-21116.