STUDENT PERSONNEL WORK And Personality Development

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/89534/1/j.2164-4918.1954.tb01566.x.pd

A software solution for recording circadian oscillator features in time-lapse live cell microscopy

BACKGROUND: Fluorescent and bioluminescent time-lapse microscopy approaches have been successfully used to investigate molecular mechanisms underlying the mammalian circadian oscillator at the single cell level. However, most of the available software and common methods based on intensity-threshold segmentation and frame-to-frame tracking are not applicable in these experiments. This is due to cell movement and dramatic changes in the fluorescent/bioluminescent reporter protein during the circadian cycle, with the lowest expression level very close to the background intensity. At present, the standard approach to analyze data sets obtained from time lapse microscopy is either manual tracking or application of generic image-processing software/dedicated tracking software. To our knowledge, these existing software solutions for manual and automatic tracking have strong limitations in tracking individual cells if their plane shifts. RESULTS: In an attempt to improve existing methodology of time-lapse tracking of a large number of moving cells, we have developed a semi-automatic software package. It extracts the trajectory of the cells by tracking theirs displacements, makes the delineation of cell nucleus or whole cell, and finally yields measurements of various features, like reporter protein expression level or cell displacement. As an example, we present here single cell circadian pattern and motility analysis of NIH3T3 mouse fibroblasts expressing a fluorescent circadian reporter protein. Using Circadian Gene Express plugin, we performed fast and nonbiased analysis of large fluorescent time lapse microscopy datasets. CONCLUSIONS: Our software solution, Circadian Gene Express (CGE), is easy to use and allows precise and semi-automatic tracking of moving cells over longer period of time. In spite of significant circadian variations in protein expression with extremely low expression levels at the valley phase, CGE allows accurate and efficient recording of large number of cell parameters, including level of reporter protein expression, velocity, direction of movement, and others. CGE proves to be useful for the analysis of widefield fluorescent microscopy datasets, as well as for bioluminescence imaging. Moreover, it might be easily adaptable for confocal image analysis by manually choosing one of the focal planes of each z-stack of the various time points of a time series. AVAILABILITY: CGE is a Java plugin for ImageJ; it is freely available at: http://bigwww.epfl.ch/sage/soft/circadian/

Martin Dibner Correspondence

Entries include a typed letter from Doubleday & Company Inc. and a hand written card from Dibner, notes of a phone call from Dibner asking for the return of his original MS and a certified mail receipt, a typed letter on personal stationery concerning the proposal to make the new library of Boston University Dibner\u27s manuscript repository, a copy of the letter of proposal from Boston University, a typed letter on Westbrook College stationery, a newspaper article clipping with a photographic image of Dibner, and a newspaper clipping relating advice from the California Fine Arts Commission to the new commission of the Arts and Humanities in the State of Main

Effects of Aloe vera on dressing percentage and haemato-biochemidal parameters of broiler chickens

Aim: To evaluate the effects of Aloe vera on dressing percentage and hemato-biochemical parameters of broiler chickens.Materials and Methods: A total of 90 chicks were used in this study. They were randomly allocated into 3 treatment groups.Fresh Aloe vera leaf juice (ALJ) was prepared and administered to the test group T3 at the rate of 20 g/Lin drinking water daily.This study was carried out for 42 days. Dressing percentage and hemato-biochemical parameters were recorded at the end ofexperiment.Results: Group that was given Aloe vera (T3) showed numerically higher dressing percentage as compared to control group(T1) and drug control group (T2). It also showed significantly (P<0.05) higher value of Hb concentration, PCV percentage,total leukocyte count (TLC), blood plasma glucose concentration, and serum calcium level as compared to control and drugcontrol groups. No significant (P>0.05) differences were observed in other parameters among all the treatment groups.Conclusion: Aloe vera has potential to be a growth promoter in broiler chicks and its growth promoting effects are comparableto that of antibiotic growth promoter (AGP)