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Research ArticleMethods/New Tools, Disorders of the Nervous System

In-Vivo Quantitative Image Analysis of Age-Related Morphological Changes of C. elegans Neurons Reveals a Correlation between Neurite Bending and Novel Neurite Outgrowths

Max Hess, Alvaro Gomariz, Orcun Goksel and Collin Y. Ewald
eNeuro 19 June 2019, 6 (4) ENEURO.0014-19.2019; DOI: https://doi.org/10.1523/ENEURO.0014-19.2019
Max Hess
1Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, Institute of Translational Medicine, Schwerzenbach-Zürich CH-8603, Switzerland
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Alvaro Gomariz
2Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, Computer-Assisted Applications in Medicine Group, Zürich, CH-8092, Switzerland
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Orcun Goksel
2Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, Computer-Assisted Applications in Medicine Group, Zürich, CH-8092, Switzerland
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Collin Y. Ewald
1Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, Institute of Translational Medicine, Schwerzenbach-Zürich CH-8603, Switzerland
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Abstract

The aging of the human brain in the absence of diseases is accompanied by subtle changes of neuronal morphology, such as dendrite restructuring, neuronal sprouting, and synaptic deteriorations, rather than neurodegeneration or gross deterioration. Similarly, the nervous system of Caenorhabditis elegans does not show neurodegeneration or gross deterioration during normal aging, but displays subtle alterations in neuronal morphology. The occurrence of these age-dependent abnormalities is stochastic and dynamic, which poses a major challenge to fully capture them for quantitative comparison. Here, we developed a semi-automated pipeline for quantitative image analysis of these features during aging. We employed and evaluated this pipeline herein to reproduce findings from previous studies using visual inspection of neuronal morphology. Importantly, our approach can also quantify additional features, such as soma volume, the length of neurite outgrowths, and their location along the aged neuron. We found that, during aging, the soma of neurons decreases in volume, whereas the number and length of neurite outgrowths from the soma both increase. Long-lived animals showed less decrease in soma volume, fewer and shorter neurite outgrowths, and protection against abnormal sharp bends preferentially localized at the distal part of the dendrites during aging. We found a correlation of sharp bends with neurite outgrowth, suggesting the hypothesis that sharp bends might proceed neurite outgrowths. Thus, our semi-automated pipeline can help researchers to obtain and analyze quantitative datasets of this stochastic process for comparison across genotypes and to identify correlations to facilitate the generation of novel hypothesis.

  • aging
  • C. elegans
  • heterogeneity
  • morphology
  • neurite bending
  • neurite outgrowth

Footnotes

  • The authors declare no competing financial interests.

  • This work was supported by Swiss National Science Foundation Grants 163898 (to C.Y.E.) and 179116 (to A.G. and O.G.). Some C. elegans strains were provided by the Caenorhabditis Genetics Center (CGC), which is funded by the National Institutes of Health Office of Research Infrastructure Programs Grant P40 OD010440.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed.

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eneuro: 6 (4)
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July/August 2019
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In-Vivo Quantitative Image Analysis of Age-Related Morphological Changes of C. elegans Neurons Reveals a Correlation between Neurite Bending and Novel Neurite Outgrowths
Max Hess, Alvaro Gomariz, Orcun Goksel, Collin Y. Ewald
eNeuro 19 June 2019, 6 (4) ENEURO.0014-19.2019; DOI: 10.1523/ENEURO.0014-19.2019

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In-Vivo Quantitative Image Analysis of Age-Related Morphological Changes of C. elegans Neurons Reveals a Correlation between Neurite Bending and Novel Neurite Outgrowths
Max Hess, Alvaro Gomariz, Orcun Goksel, Collin Y. Ewald
eNeuro 19 June 2019, 6 (4) ENEURO.0014-19.2019; DOI: 10.1523/ENEURO.0014-19.2019
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Keywords

  • aging
  • C. elegans
  • heterogeneity
  • morphology
  • neurite bending
  • neurite outgrowth

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