Christensen, Ryan, Shroff, Hari, Colon-Ramos, Daniel, Harvey, Brandon, Guo, Min, Santella, Anthony, Xu, Stephen, Del Toro-Pedrosa, Daniel, Mohler, William, Wu, Yicong, Bokinsky, Alexandra, Moyle, Mark, Duncan, Leighton, Levin, Michael, Ardiel, Evan, Schwartz, Gabi, Lauziere, Andrew, Karaj, Nensi, McCreedy, Evan, Bao, Zhirong, Vazquez Martinez, Nabor
[
International Worm Meeting,
2021]
The limited number of cells and invariant cell lineage of the Caenorhabditis elegans embryo make it an excellent system for examining complex developmental events, such as tissue movement and neurodevelopment. Prior work from the WormGUIDES project has digitized the position of all nuclei for the first half of embryogenesis, creating a computational map of the embryo that can be used to overlay developmentally relevant information like gene expression or neurite outgrowth. Creating a similar map for the second half of embryogenesis is difficult due to embryo elongation and movement. We have developed software to computationally untwist the moving embryo, allowing for analysis of cell position during this period of development, and have begun expanding our computational map into the second half of embryogenesis. Our current map includes 202 nuclei across the embryo, including 32 neuronal nuclei, 81 body wall muscle nuclei, 20 intestinal, and 20 seam cell nuclei. We also include a tract-based model of the nerve ring, showing how it is positioned relative to neuronal and body wall muscle nuclei as the embryo elongates. In addition to our partial nuclear atlas, we describe improvements to our untwisting and tracking workflow, including a deep-learning image restoration capability which improves image quality during rapid embryo movements, and a semi-automated tracking upgrade to our untwisting software which improves tracking throughput. As we continue to add nuclei and neuronal morphology to the atlas, we plan to integrate our post twitching model with previous pre-twitching work to develop a digital atlas spanning the entirety of embryogenesis.