Fuhui Long, Ph.D.

Janelia Farm Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
19700 Helix Drive
Ashburn, VA, 20147


Biography:
Dr. Fuhui Long is a Research Scientist at Janelia Farm Research Campus, Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She was with Life Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory from 2004 to 2005, and Department of Neurobiology, Duke University Medical Center from 2001 to 2004. Dr. Long's research interests focus on developing novel imaging, image analysis, computer vision, data mining, and machine learning techniques to solve challenging biomedical problems. Particularly interested in understanding protein functions at single cell level, she is developing algorithms and software for the automatic analysis of 3D high-resolution images of model organisms, such as C. elegans and drosophila, produced by light and electron microscopy. She is also developing 3D imaging techniques for photoactivated localization microscopy

Talk Title: Building 3D Digital Nuclei Atlases of Model Organisms

Abstract: C.elegans, fruit fly, and mouse, have been extensively used as model organisms in biological studies. Despite detailed knowledge of the anatomy of these organisms, the lack of digital atlases of the spatial location of nuclei impedes automatic high-content analysis of information at the single cell level. We developed a pipeline of image analysis approaches and applied them to build the 3D digital nuclei atlases of newly hatched first larval stage hermaphrodites of C. elegans and of the fly embryo at stage 17. The pipeline includes high-resolution microscopy imaging, nuclei segmentation, annotation, image registration, and statistical analysis of nuclei information. We also developed an automate cell recognition approach based on the statistical information carried by the atlases. These techniques enable high-throughput gene expression analysis and optogenetics experiments at the single cell level.