Asymmetric division is crucial for the development of multicellular organisms. The embryo of the nematode C. elegans is a well-suited model system to analyze the mechanisms of asymmetric cell division. Using spinning disc confocal microscopy, we performed live imaging of green fluorescent-tagged force generation proteins of C. elegans zygotes. This revealed that such proteins form dynamic fiber-like structures as well as foci. This student project entails designing image-analysis algorithms and applying these methods to monitor the behavior of these structures in a quantitative manner over the sequence of images. The project will be implemented in Java as a ImageJ or Icy plugin.

Collaboration with Melina Scholze, Gonczy Lab (http://gonczy-lab.epfl.ch)