4D cell biology: big data image analytics and lattice light-sheet imaging reveal dynamics of clathrin-mediated endocytosis in stem cell derived intestinal organoids.

New methods in stem cell 3D organoid tissue culture, advanced imaging and big data image analytics now allow tissue scale 4D cell biology, but currently available analytical pipelines are inadequate for handing and analyzing the resulting gigabytes and terabytes of high-content imaging data. We expressed fluorescent protein fusions of clathrin and dynamin2 at endogenous levels in genome-edited human embryonic stem cells, which were differentiated into hESC-derived intestinal epithelial organoids. Lattice Light-Sheet Imaging with adaptive optics (AO-LLSM) allowed us to image large volumes of these organoids (70µm x 60µm x 40µm xyz) at 5.7s/frame. We developed an open source data analysis package termed pyLattice to process the resulting large (∼60Gb) movie datasets and to track clathrin-mediated endocytosis (CME) events. CME tracks could be recorded from ∼35 cells at a time, resulting in ∼4000 processed tracks per movie. Based on their localization in the organoid, we classified CME tracks into apical, lateral and basal events and found that CME dynamics are similar for all three classes, despite reported differences in membrane tension. pyLattice coupled with AO-LLSM makes possible quantitative, high temporal and spatial resolution analysis of subcellular events within tissues. Movie S1 Movie S1 Thresholded 3D AO-LLSM data of an intestinal epithelial organoid showing clathrin (red) and dynamin2 (green) puncta in surface depiction. The movie zooms out from a single clathrin mediated endocytosis event that shows both clathrin and dynamin2 at the same location to eventually show the whole AO-LLSM field of view. Nuclear envelopes and the outer membranes of the tissue are depicted in transparent white. Movie S2 Movie S2 Thresholded 3D AO-LLSM data of an intestinal epithelial organoid showing clathrin (red) and dynamin2 (green) puncta in surface depiction. The movie rotates the AO-LLSM field of view. Nuclear envelopes and the outer membranes of the tissue are depicted in transparent white. Movie S3 Movie S3 Thresholded 3D AO-LLSM data of an intestinal epithelial organoid. The curved surface is of the spherical organoid is visible as the movie rotates. Clathrin puncta are visible throughout the tissue (white). Movie S4 Movie S4 The detection step in the data processing pipeline retrieves all clathrin puncta in the volume. Detected puncta are marked with a cube (blue). Movie S5 Movie S5 Zoom on one clathrin puncta in the thresholded 3D dataset. The punctum of interest is marked with a blue cube. Other puncta are also visible. Movie S6 Movie S6 Zoom on the same clathrin puncta as in M3 in non-thresholded 3D data. The surrounding fluorescence is visible as a transparent cloud.