Image-Processing Software for High-Throughput Quantification of Colony Luminescence

Abstract

Luminescent markers are widely used as reporters for various biologically interesting traits. In colony luminescence assays, the levels of luminescence around each colony can be used to compare the levels of traits of interest for different strains, treatments, etc., using quantitative measurements of the luminescence. However, automatic methods of obtaining this data are underdeveloped, making this a laborious manual process, especially in analyzing large numbers of colonies. The significance of this work is in developing an automatic, high-throughput tool for quantitative analysis of colony luminescence assays, which will allow fast collection of qualitative data from these assays and thus increase their overall usability.