Visible Discovery platform combines proprietary machine learning and signal processing techniques to deliver rich, unbiased insights from assays in living cells, tissues and model organisms
Reify reports that its Visible Discovery platform was showcased in two posters at the Sixth International Conference on Systems Biology (ICSB) at Harvard Medical School on 19-24 October 2005.
The posters demonstrated the use of Visible Discovery for quantifying assay results from experiments in two very different biological systems: zebrafish heart function, and subcellular chromosome dynamics.
The posters were presented on 20 and 21 October during the conference proceedings, and were produced by Reify collaborators at the Cardiovascular Research Center at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Dana Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI).
One poster, 'Machine learning approaches to high-throughput in vivo analysis of cardiovascular structure and function in zebrafish,' illustrates Reify's breakthrough capabilities for measuring dynamic cardiovascular function in living zebrafish embryos treated with drugs.
Jordan Shin and Calum MacRae of MGH worked with Reify to validate this novel, high-throughput method for studying heart function in intact animals using conventional transmitted light microscopy.
"The zebrafish represents an outstanding model system for studying a wide range of diseases, developmental pathways and genetic perturbations," said Shin.
"Zebrafish are vertebrate animals that share most major organs and anatomical systems with humans and other mammals.
"They reproduce quickly - so that you can develop large, uniform genetic populations - and the transparent embryos develop externally so that you can visualize and record organ physiology with ordinary microscopes.
"Zebrafish are also an emerging model for assessing toxicities of drug candidates.
"Traditional quantification of cardiac function is a laborious and time-consuming process.
"Reify's Visible Discovery technology provides a rich solution with fast, unbiased results".
A second poster, 'Transcription-associated gene dynamics', demonstrates Reify's capabilities for measuring small scale, subcellular movement of chromosomes in a dynamic, high-content screen.
David Drubin and Pamela Silver used Visible Discovery to produce quantitative results from an assay that discovered how chromosomes move in relation to cellular nuclei.
"By using Visible Discovery," said Drubin, "we were able to assess the dynamics of chromosome movement in relation to the nucleus without having to go through the tedious process of telling the computer for each cell, 'here is the chromosome, here is the nucleus, now start tracking them' - as a result, we were able to extract data that is predictive of the output of more labour intensive analyses.
"This will enable us to develop future high thoughput screens based on chromosome movement".
Arman Garakani, Reify's chief technology officer, commented: "We are extremely privileged to be working with two outstanding teams at MGH and DFCI, and we thank our collaborators for their efforts.
"We started Reify with the mission to deliver unsupervised, unbiased, fully automated methods for analysing living biology.
"I have been surprised at the amount of time and effort biologists spend tweaking image analysis toolboxes and developing custom algorithms to quantitate their assay results.
"Visible Discovery was developed to change all of that, and these posters give excellent demonstrations of how the same technology can be used to deliver precise measurements at the level of a living, beating heart and at the level of subcellular particle movement, with little or no end-user intervention".
Reify describes itself as the premiere source for quantitative, phenotypic screening of living biology.
The company's Visible Discovery platform combines proprietary machine learning and signal processing techniques to deliver rich, unbiased insights from assays in living cells, tissues and model organisms.
Visible Discovery performs powerful, label-free quantification of complex cell, tissue and organism phenotypes, and provides breakthrough measurements of subcellular particle movement.
Visible Discovery is said to be the ideal system for delivering precise, repeatable, scalable assay results from compound screening, pathway-based discovery, cardiac toxicity studies and functional genomics.
