3D-MORPHOSTAT – Unraveling molecular architecture at the nm level with multicolor 3D super‐resolution microscopy and object‐based spatial analysis

This project aims to develop new tools for the statistical analysis of fluorescent biological images, both in so-called classical microscopies (epifluorenscence, videomicroscopy, confocal microcopy) and in nanoscopy (SIM, STED and STORM), thus achieving resolutions of the order of ten nanometers. To this end, the project will be developed in collaboration between Jean-Christophe Olivo-Marin (physicist, director of the Carnot Pasteur Microbes and Health Institute, director of the Biological Image Analysis Unit) and Lydia Danglot (neurobiologist, scientific director of the Neurimag imaging platform at the Institut de Psychiatrie et Neurosciences de Paris).

J-C. Olivo-Marin’s laboratory is dedicated to the processing of biological images and the quantitative analysis of cellular morphodynamics, while Lydia Danglot focuses on the role of vesicular trafficking in the development of synaptic contacts through dynamic microscopy and super-resolution approaches.

The aim of the project funded by the DIM ELICIT is to develop and to make available a new image analysis software. It will enable the evaluation of distances between biological objects in order to identify direct or indirect interactions in a way that is unbiased, at the subcellular or nanoscopic level.

We will develop image analysis tools to detect and characterize defects or interaction events using spatial statistical analysis methods (Riplay function). All these tools will be developed on the Icy free and open-source software and will be accessible to all scientists. In parallel, we will develop new super-resolution imaging techniques (SIM and STORM) to image the structural organization of molecules in space, at the molecular level.