Discussion

Microscopy images contain rich information about the state of cells, tissues, and organisms and are an important part of experiments to address a multitude of basic biological questions and world health problems. Our laboratory works with dozens of collaborators around the world to design and execute large-scale microscopy-based experiments in order to identify the causes and potential cures of disease. These experiments, though carried out in non-profit institutions, have uncovered drugs effective in several mouse models of disease, as well as mechanisms underlying other diseases and biological processes.

Our laboratory is extracting patterns of morphological perturbations (“signatures”) from images in order to identify similarities and differences between various chemical or genetic treatments. Using model systems that are more and more physiologically relevant, yet still compatible with automated instrumentation, our goals in these profiling experiments include identifying drug mechanisms of action, the impact of disease-related alleles, performance-diverse chemical libraries, mechanisms of liver toxicity, and diagnostics for psychiatric illness. We hope to make perturbations in cell morphology as computable as other large-scale functional genomics data.