You can help science by counting chromosomes!
Hello, maybe you do not know it already, I work on a small creature called Adineta vaga. It is a microscopic animal from the rotifer family (very common, yet largely unknown). This animal is interesting for many things, but one of our main reasons to study Adineta vaga is its ability to repair DNA.
Some context:
DAN is a molecule containing the building recipe of a living organism. It is found in animals in the form of several chromosomes. At different development stages of a cell, the chromosomes are condensed. In A. vaga, when chromosomes are condensed, they look like round shapes more or less elongated. The set of chromosomes is called a "karyotype".
The experiment:
Recently, I tried to count the chromosomes of A. vaga, (to "karyotype" it). We know the expected number in one "normal" individual, but in my experiment, I think that this number may vary. To check that, I took many pictures of the DNA thanks to a fluorescent molecule that binds to DNA. The problem I now have is that sometimes chromosomes are on top of each others. Thus, on a 2D image, we can count only one fluorescent dot, whereas there are actually two. To solve that, we take many photos from different "layers" and we stack them to reconstruct a 3D karyotype.
Why help?
I have two problems to solve. 1. It is not always easy to distinguish chromosomes because they are sometimes close together, and I may either miss one or count more than one. To avoid that, I like to have other people's opinions. 2. I am biased because I took the pictures and I know on which images I expect to count more or less chromosomes. Thus, I need neutral eyes to count these chromosomes (ideally, somebody who does not know how many chromosomes to expect on an image).
There is a third advantage to asking for more people to count: if I have many counts, I can start doing statistical analysis and take the average and standard deviations of the counts. That way I harness the "wisdom of the crowd" and I can classify the images as uninformative, as "noisy", if everybody counts a different number or as unambiguous if everybody reports the same...
How help?
To count, you can follow this short guide:
- Some web navigators cannot show the 3D chromosomes. I tried with Google Chrome, and it works, if it does not work for you on another software, maybe switching to this one may solve the issue.
- To report the count : use a unique username that you can easily remember (for instance, a first name and the first letter of a surname). This way, you avoid counting multiple times the same images.
- To navigate the 3D model, you can use the scroll button of the mouse (zoom/dezoom) and use SHIFT+click to slide on the image. By clicking on the image, you can rotate it.
Thank you so much for your help!
Counting here:
To avoid multiple counts, you can use a pseudo, if you reload the page or if you count in different sessions, use the same pseudo. The system will keep your info in memory, so do not use sensitive passwords. Note: if no images show, it could be because of the web navigator.
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