Are there websites or tools available that show an image of an embryo, preferably late-stage, with the cell identity information overlaid? I have stained embryos with antibodies to different chromatin marks and notice that their localization is different in some cells, but I don’t know how to identify what these cells are.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
We are currently working in cooperation with several groups to provide such tools in the future.
Bill Mohler at U Conn Health Sciences Center has a website in development that may help already, although I am unclear as to how late in embryonic development will be required to meet your needs.
Zhirong Bao has developed means to follow embryos in 4D until quite late in their lineage history to follow the relative positions of identified cells in relation to their neighbors. We are currently working with the Bao lab to annotate movies that show of features of individual tissues as they mature.
We have a limited set of embryos that were well photographed during morphogenesis, but most of the time, each project only aims to photograph a subset of the whole embryo. But we do hope to provide a comprehensive EM atlas at key timepoints in the future.
Does your data have enough clarity to detect differences in cell sizes relative to their neighbors? If so, we might be able to help decipher the location of larger cells (like intestine, or rows of muscle cells) compared to the rest. For the moment, the late embryo remains a challenge.
David Hall
Some of the images and annotations in the GLOWorm repository may be just what you’re looking for. What late stage are you interested in? Before or after the worm starts to wiggle?