MotoCell, a modular web application for studying cell movement

Evaluation of motility of transformed cell lines in different experimental conditions with MotoCell Rossella Tufano1, E. Toscano1, L.Sepe1,2, G. Paolella1,2 1Dept Molecular Medicine and Medical Biotechnology, Federico II Univ., Naples, Italy 2CEINGE Advanced Biotechnologies, Naples, Italy Cell migration, the process by which cells or cell groups move from one location to another, plays a crucial role in different physiological and pathological conditions and may be easily observed in cultured cells as well as in vivo. Cell migration studies imply an acquisition phase by time-lapse microscopy, followed by cell tracking and statistical analysis. MotoCell is a tool for quantitative study of cell movement, developed in our laboratory where it is continuously extended and improved. It is an environment where cell tracking, evaluation of motility parameters and statistical analysis is fully integrated, to effectively study motility of cell populations as well as the behaviour of single individual cells, maintained in different experimental conditions. Many analysis procedures use the analytical tools and graphical representations available in R, which is transparently accessed within the analysis section and provides sophisticated statistical analysis tools. All these aspects are integrated in a web application, which may be conveniently, quickly and interactively used from the operator desktop without requiring any installation step. MotoCell may be used to identify and study homogeneous subgroups in heterogenous populations by selecting movement data on the basis of the features of the observed cells.