Grant: Undergraduate: Summer Studentship Award - Institute Community Support

Mitochondria are required to produce the energy that cells use for their activities. They normally exist as a set of connected tubules forming a dynamic network that varies according to cellular state. In response to stress, the mitochondrial network adapts to better match the need of the cell. Several diseases, including cancer and neurodegeneration are linked to alterations in mitochondrial networks. In order to better understand the roles and impact of mitochondrial networks, it is necessary to quantify the state of the network. This task is however laborious since it often requires a manual count of the length of the mitochondria within the network. It is thus impossible to analyze a large number of cells. This problem affects the quality of research and prevents several problems from finding a solution. To solve this problem, we propose a new automated methodology to quantify the properties of the network, allowing us to understand what causes the changes in mitochondrial network and how to manipulate it to prevent neurodegeneration or cancer. The proposed system may, with the help of this grant, be applied to large datasets consisting of several hundred thousand images.