An imaging system for standardized quantitative analysis of C. elegans behavior

Abstract

Background: The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is widely used for the genetic analysis of neuronal cell biology, development, and behavior. Because traditional methods for evaluating behavioral phenotypes are qualitative and imprecise, there is a need for tools that allow quantitation and standardization of C. elegans behavioral assays.

Results: Here we describe a tracking and imaging system for the automated analysis of C. elegans morphology and behavior. Using this system, it is possible to record the behavior of individual nematodes over long time periods and quantify 144 specific phenotypic parameters.

Conclusions: These tools for phenotypic analysis will provide reliable, comprehensive scoring of a wide range of behavioral abnormalities, and will make it possible to standardize assays such that behavioral data from different labs can readily be compared. In addition, this system will facilitate high-throughput collection of phenotypic data that can ultimately be used to generate a comprehensive database of C. elegans phenotypic information.

Availability: The hardware configuration and software for the system are available from wschafer@ucsd.edu.

Figure 1

Illustration of the hardware of tracking system. A Nikon SMZ-800 microscope with a stereoscopic zoom is used to visualize the animals. Image signal can be simultaneously captured by a VCR and digitalized by a NI PCI-1409 image capture board through a Cohu monochrome analog CCD camera. NI FlexMotion PCI-1744 stage controller controls the Deadal motorized stage to follow the animal, and receives the stage position information.

Figure 2

Representations of the C. elegans animal. The image is recovered from avi file. The Red line shows the boundary of the binary image. The skeleton is shown in white line and the yellow dots represent the skeleton points.