In addition, the number of Nuclei per Cluster (Polynucleation) was calculated. Finally, Stem Cells antagonist based on visual inspection of images analyzed with this strategy, the Cluster population was further classified into either MNGC (>3 Nuclei per Cluster) or non-MNGC (≤3

Nuclei per Cluster) sub-populations (Figure  1B). This approach was then used to quantitatively measure MNGC formation in RAW264.7 macrophages infected with wild-type Bp K96243. As seen in Figure  1C, the results of these experiments indicate that the HCI MNGC analysis can be used at the well level to detect MNGC formation in Bp K96243-infected populations when compared to mock infected samples. In particular, and as expected, infected cells had a 4.3-fold increase in Cluster Area, a 2.4-fold increase in Number of Nuclei per Cluster, and a 21-fold selleck compound increase in the Percentage of MNGC when compared to non-infected samples. Single cell analysis of the Bp K96243 infected macrophages Quantitation of

MNGCs using the image analysis procedure typically outputs statistical descriptors, such as means and standard deviations, at the well level. While the well level analysis of MNGC formation provides selleckchem statistically significant differences between mock infected and Bp K96243 infected cells (Figure  1B), we also wanted to determine if our image analysis approach was capable of distinguishing MNGCs in heterogeneous populations of infected cells. To test this, we plotted single-cell data generated by the MNGC analysis on either mock-infected or Bp K96243 infected cells (Figure  2). Casein kinase 1 As expected, using a similar classification approach to the one described above, we were able to visually detect an increase in the incidence of MNGC formation in images from Bp K96243 infected macrophages compared to uninfected macrophages (Figure  2A). The percentage of Cluster objects classified as MNGC (+) increased from 0.52% (mock) to 6.6% (Bp K96243) (Figure  2B). The presence of a small percentage

of MNGC (+) objects in uninfected RAW264.7 samples reflects the presence of cell clumps morphologically unrelated to real MNGC (Figure  2A and Figure  2B) and constitutes the negative control measurement background in the MNGC analysis. Nevertheless, as expected, clusters classified as MNGC (+) in Bp K96243 infected samples had larger mean Cluster Area and a larger mean Number of Spots per Cluster when compared to the MNGC (-) objects present in the same samples at the 10 h time point. Accordingly, the higher incidence of MNGC (+) objects in Bp K96243 infected cells when compared to mock infected cells led to a shift towards higher values of Cluster Area and Number of Spots per Cluster in the single-cell distributions (Figure  2C). Thus, the results of the MNGC HCI analysis indicate that, at an MOI of 30 and 10 h post Bp K96243 infections, there are at least two sub-populations of RAW264.