Imaging infection: An impetus to technology innovation in high-content analysis.

Spencer Shorte, Institut Pasteur, Paris. 
 
A wealth of celluloid evidence details “high-content analysis” (HCA) of living microbiology using a microscope and cinema camera as early as 1907 (1,2). However, these remarkable records were lost for decades as an historic artifact. Today, a variety of technologies including: imaging & flow cytometry; multi-dimensional dynamic imaging, ultra-structural microscopy; and intravital imaging facilitate analysis of infectious disease processes at sub-cellular, cellular, tissue and whole organism levels providing rich information content. Using malaria as a disease model, this lecture will describe multi-facetted visualization of the disease process, including high-resolution intravital multi-dimensional dynamic imaging (3) that ultimately helped the scientific animation filmmaker Drew Berry to complete his magnificent animated description of the malaria life cycle (4,5). In perspective, studies on infectious biology require relevant, high fidelity experimental paradigms; and improved HCA approaches will better ensure fragile host-pathogen interactions are analyzed in situ without compromise.

1. Frischknecht F, Mota M, Way M, Shorte S (2009).  Perspective: Hidden treasures from the archives. Biotechnol J. 4(6):784-5
2. Frischknecht F, Gunzer M, Shorte SL (2009). Retrospective: Birth of the cool - imaging and microbiology from Ibn al-Haytham to Jean Comandon. Biotechnol J. 4(6):787-90
   
3. Amino R, Thiberge S, Martin B, Celli S, Shorte S, Frischknecht F, Ménard R. (2006). Quantitative imaging of Plasmodium transmission from mosquito to mammal. Nat Med. 12(2):220-4.
   
4. http://www.wehi.edu.au/education/wehi-tv/
   
5. http://www.cytographics.com/drew.html