Deciphering subcellular processes in live imaging datasets via dynamic probabilistic networks

Spatiotemporal Regulators for Insulin-Stimulated GLUT4 Vesicle Exocytosis

Insulin increases glucose uptake and storage in muscle and adipose cells, which is accomplished through the mobilization of intracellular GLUT4 storage vesicles (GSVs) to the cell surface upon stimulation. Importantly, the dysfunction of insulin-regulated GLUT4 trafficking is strongly linked with peripheral insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes in human. The insulin signaling pathway, key signaling molecules involved, and precise trafficking itinerary of GSVs are largely identified. Understanding the interaction between insulin signaling molecules and key regulatory proteins that are involved in spatiotemporal regulation of GLUT4 vesicle exocytosis is of great importance to explain the pathogenesis of diabetes and may provide new potential therapeutic targets.

Optogenetic activation reveals distinct roles of PIP3 and Akt in adipocyte insulin action

Glucose transporter 4 (GLUT4; also known as SLC2A4) resides on intracellular vesicles in muscle and adipose cells, and translocates to the plasma membrane in response to insulin. The phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K)-Akt signaling pathway plays a major role in GLUT4 translocation; however, a challenge has been to unravel the potentially distinct contributions of PI3K and Akt (of which there are three isoforms, Akt1-Akt3) to overall insulin action. Here, we describe new optogenetic tools based on CRY2 and the N-terminus of CIB1 (CIBN). We used these 'Opto' modules to activate PI3K and Akt selectively in time and space in 3T3-L1 adipocytes. We validated these tools using biochemical assays and performed live-cell kinetic analyses of IRAP-pHluorin translocation (IRAP is also known as LNPEP and acts as a surrogate marker for GLUT4 here). Strikingly, Opto-PIP3 largely mimicked the maximal effects of insulin stimulation, whereas Opto-Akt only partially triggered translocation. Conversely, drug-mediated inhibition of Akt only partially dampened the translocation response of Opto-PIP3 In spatial optogenetic studies, focal targeting of Akt to a region of the cell marked the sites where IRAP-pHluorin vesicles fused, supporting the idea that local Akt-mediated signaling regulates exocytosis. Taken together, these results indicate that PI3K and Akt play distinct roles, and that PI3K stimulates Akt-independent pathways that are important for GLUT4 translocation.

Adaptive Spot Detection With Optimal Scale Selection in Fluorescence Microscopy Images

Accurately detecting subcellular particles in fluorescence microscopy is of primary interest for further quantitative analysis such as counting, tracking, or classification. Our primary goal is to segment vesicles likely to share nearly the same size in fluorescence microscopy images. Our method termed adaptive thresholding of Laplacian of Gaussian (LoG) images with autoselected scale (ATLAS) automatically selects the optimal scale corresponding to the most frequent spot size in the image. Four criteria are proposed and compared to determine the optimal scale in a scale-space framework. Then, the segmentation stage amounts to thresholding the LoG of the intensity image. In contrast to other methods, the threshold is locally adapted given a probability of false alarm (PFA) specified by the user for the whole set of images to be processed. The local threshold is automatically derived from the PFA value and local image statistics estimated in a window whose size is not a critical parameter. We also propose a new data set for benchmarking, consisting of six collections of one hundred images each, which exploits backgrounds extracted from real microscopy images. We have carried out an extensive comparative evaluation on several data sets with ground-truth, which demonstrates that ATLAS outperforms existing methods. ATLAS does not need any fine parameter tuning and requires very low computation time. Convincing results are also reported on real total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy images.