A Method for Quantitative Analysis of Long-distance Cellular Communication in 3D Time-lapse in vivo  Living Embryos

Background: Embryogenesis is a precise process with cell growth patterns, where the embryonic development is related to the cell morphological features. The cell morphology and cell-cell contact are crucial for biophysically quantitative analysis of in vivo animals. The studies of cell-cell contact and communication are increasing to understand the influence mechanisms in the growing embryonic systems. Morphological features are the significant ways to know the details of inner cellular development during embryogenesis. Studies of cell-cell interactions do not adequately take account of the impact of the cell-cell contact and communication. Methods: An cellular features embedding method is proposed for cellular contact study, where the Alpha shape helps the method build accurate 3D cell-cell contact graphs for long-distance cell-cell communication. Graph wavelet transform (GWF) embedding can systematically characterize the morphological features of the contact cells of a cell. The embedded morphological features, like cell size ratio, with higher precision, are applied in the power law relationship between the cell size ratio and the cell cycle duration in C. elegans. Conclusions: The proposed method enables the analysis of accurate 3D cellular features by integrating information of cell neighborhoods, showing that long-distance cellular communication exists during early embryogenesis. With long-distance communication information extracted by graph wavelet, asymmetries between the enhanced morphological features explains cell lineage patterns well.