MeDUsA: A novel system for automated axon quantification to evaluate neuroaxonal degeneration
biorxiv(2021)
摘要
Background Drosophila is an excellent model organism for studying human neurodegenerative diseases (NDs), and the rough eye phenotype (REP) assay is a convenient experimental system for analysing the toxicity of ectopically expressed human disease genes. However, the association between REP and axonal degeneration, an early sign of ND, remains unclear. To address this question, we developed a method to evaluate axonal degeneration by quantifying the number of retinal R7 axons in Drosophila ; however, it requires expertise and is time-consuming. Therefore, there is a need for an easy-to-use software that can automatically quantify the axonal degeneration.
Result We created MeDUsA (a ‘method for the quantification of degeneration using fly axons’), which is a standalone executable computer program based on Python that combines a pre-trained deep-learning masking tool with an axon terminal counting tool. This software automatically quantifies the number of axons from a confocal z-stack image series. Using this software, we have demonstrated for the first time directly that axons degenerate when the causative factors of NDs (αSyn, Tau, TDP-43, HTT) were expressed in the Drosophila eye. Furthermore, we compared axonal toxicity of the representative causative genes of NDs and their pathological alleles with REP and found no significant correlation between them.
Conclusions MeDUsA rapidly and accurately quantifies axons in Drosophila eye. By simplifying and automating time-consuming manual efforts requiring significant expertise, it enables large-scale, complex research efforts on axonal degeneration, such as screening to identify genes or drugs that mediate axonal toxicity caused by ND disease proteins.
### Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
* MeDUsA
: a method for quantification of degeneration using fly axons
ND
: Neurodegenerative disease
REP
: rough eye phenotype
SCA3
: Spinocerebellar ataxia type 3
PD
: Parkinson’s disease
ALS
: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
CNN
: convolutional neural network
RNAi
: RNA interference
SCA31
: spinocerebellar ataxia type 31
FTLD
: frontotemporal lobar degeneration
WD
: Wallerian degeneration
更多查看译文
关键词
neuroaxonal degeneration,axon quantification
AI 理解论文
溯源树
样例
生成溯源树,研究论文发展脉络
Chat Paper
正在生成论文摘要