H2ax foci were used as a biomarker for radiationinduced effects. H2ax foci as a pharmacodynamic marker for dna damage induced by dna interstrand crosslinking drugs. High throughput evaluation of gammah2ax radiation oncology. To prevent bias in the selection of cells that displayed foci, nuclei were randomly selected for 4,6diamidino2phenylindole staining and then monitored for focus formation. Phosphorylation of h2ax at serine 9 is an important process to recruit all dna repair associated proteins and also considered as a reliable marker for dna dsb 23. H2ax stabilization is mediated by the atm kinase, sirtuin protein sirt6, and iswi family chromatin remodeler snf2h. To determine sample size, radiation dose was used as a proxy for excess.
The objective of the present study was to develop a rapid, highthroughput. H2ax is a well documented early, sensitive, and selective marker of dna doublestrand breaks dsbs. The image processing is performed by a hough transform based algorithm, charm, which has wide applicability for the detection and analysis of cells and cell colonies. Unfortunately, due to the ongoing transition from java 6 to java 8, this download of plain imagej2 cannot currently be updated to the latest java8compatible version. In general, both techniques are laborious and prone to artifacts associated. H2axpositive nuclei after uvb exposure of unstimulated or stimulated peripheral blood lymphocytes is shown in figures 2 and 3, respectively. The mean number of gamma h2ax foci per nucleus from three independent experiments ranged from 4. The image processing is performed by a hough transform based.
H2ax foci formation exhibits a strong linear relationship with radiation exposure r 2 0. This is relatively easy as nuclei tend to be fairly well separated, similar in size and brightly stained. In humans and other eukaryotes, the dna is wrapped around histone octamers, consisting of core histones h2a, h2b, h3 and h4, to form chromatin. After 3 and 4h, the number of h2ax foci and the percentage of positive nuclei progressively decreased, as compared with the corresponding value previously observed, but both parameters, in all treated cells, resulted always significantly higher 1.
I am starting to do some gamma h2ax focci staining in next month. Welecome all brothers and sisters from imagej mailing list. H2ax foci is regarded as a sensitive and quantitative surrogate marker for the number of radiationinduced dsbs 18. Two image acquisition methods are being evaluated for this second acquisition stage, aiming to capture an in focus image of all foci, distributed in 3 dimensions, in a single 2dimensional image see fig. H2ax foci scoring is widely used as a measure for dsbs. Doublestrand breaks dsbs are the most deleterious dna lesions, which, if left unrepaired, may have severe consequences for cell survival, as they lead to chromosome aberrations, genomic instability, or cell death. H2ax foci, 53bp1 foci and pkap1 focipositive cells contained only one focus in the blank control group and the radonexposed groups with low doses, whereas the cells. Foci for both markers arise at dsb sites, causing signal to appear yellowish because of overlap in.
Oct 30, 2014 investigation of dna damage induced by ct xrays in paediatric patients versus patient dose in a multicentre setting. Residual gammah2ax foci as an indication of lethal dna lesions. A standard imagej plugin filter that operates on an opened image. How to count gamma h2ax foci in cells with the help of. The focinator a new opensource tool for highthroughput foci. Available open source programs, such as focicounter, cellprofiler and imagej, can process the images which have been. Atm and sirt6snf2h mediate transient h2ax stabilization when. H2ax foci levels in cells provides a sensitive and reliable method for quantitation of the radiationinduced dna damage response.
Previously, we found that excessive glutamatergic activity increased. Imagej2x is medical image processing program inspired by nih image for the macintosh. Gammah2ax is a variant of the h2a histone protein that maintains genomic stability. H2ax is mediated by the kinases ataxia telangiectasia mutated and dnadependent protein kinase dnapk that also phosphorylate. We demonstrated that, 1 the use of higher magnification 60.
H2ax foci formation was validated preclinically in comparison with the comet assay, and evaluated pharmacodynamically in two phase i studies of different dosing schedules of the novel crosslinking agent sjg6 sg2000. Download platform independent to install imagej on a computer with java preinstalled, or to upgrade to the latest full distribution including macros, plugins and luts, download the zip archive 6mb and extract the imagej directory. H2ax foci may form within the postcleavage synaptic complex 4, 5 and then remain associated with unresolved signal ends, which are stable for several hours before being joined 5, 20. Andronache, the pdf file you sent was a bit confusing for a beginner, i was able to make the mask of my dapi image, and then combine it with my h2ax staining after then how do i proceed to count the foci per nuclei. As expected, after ion irradiation, an h2axdeficient cell line did not show. Abstract phosphorylation of the chromatin protein h2ax forming. H2ax 140s, which forms when doublestrand breaks appear. During analysis, individual planes are deconvoluted and stacked to produce a maximum projected image to minimize the overlap of foci tophat filter applied.
In this work, we examined the dna repair dynamics of cells exposed to radiation delivered in. H2ax biodosimetry for use in large scale radiation incidents, at the cost of somewhat longer foci scoring times. H2ax and 53bp1 that coincide at sites of doublestrand breaks dsbs after ionizing radiation. Image processing and control software for highcontent screening p. Linking gammah2ax foci and cancer in rat skin exposed to. Clustered dna damage induces pannuclear h2ax phosphorylation.
H2ax time course was compared with cell killing and lethal mutation and the results highlighted a correlation between cellular end points and the duration of. H2ax foci persistence was also dependent on radiation quality, i. In the case of assays where the signal of interest emanates from small punctate areas within the cell, this step is critical, particularly when large numbers of puncta fall. This algorithm and its applications for cell nucleus and foci detection will be described. Various physical, chemical, and biological factors are involved in dsb induction. Atm and sirt6snf2h mediate transient h2ax stabilization. How to count gamma h2ax foci in cells with the help of imagej. Can someone please tell me step by step on how to do this. Immunocytochemical detection of foci in 10m frozen sections of liver and testes from. Ionizing radiationinduced dsbs activate histone h2ax within 3 minutes after dna damage by phosphorylating a highly conserved serine, ser 9.
Vojnovic university of oxford gray cancer institute, mount vernon hospital, northwood, ha6 2jr, uk. H2ax foci analysis can supplement the early triage of casualties based on clinical. Aug 24, 2009 the dna doublestrand break dsb is the primary lethal lesion after therapeutic radiation. Phosphorylation of the chromatin protein h2ax forming. Induction and repair of dna dsb as revealed by h2ax. H2ax is a known marker for irradiationinduced dna dsbs. The irradiation is usually performed with a fractionated scheme, where the dose required to kill tumour cells is given in several sessions, spaced by specific time intervals, to allow healthy tissue recovery. The phosphorylation of h2ax at serine9 leads to the formation gammah2ax foci, which occur in megabase chromatin domains at sites of dna doublestrand breaks dsbs. H2ax foci following ct scans cannot be excluded, especially at the high iodine concentration of 50 mg ml.
Count the number of nuclei in a field this is relatively easy as nuclei tend to be fairly well separated, similar in size and brightly stained. Formation of dynamic gammah2ax domains along broken dna strands is distinctly regulated by atm and mdc1 and dependent upon h2ax densities in chromatin. H2ax detection utilize laborious and lowthroughput microscopybased methods. H2ax and red lower detail, 53bp1 channels at 50% size to display individual foci.
To install imagej on a computer with java pre installed, or to upgrade to the latest full distribution including macros. Imagej2 is a new version of imagej for the next generation of multidimensional image data, with a focus on scientific imaging. Support is available on the mailing list and on the image. Phosphorylated fraction of h2ax as a measurement for dna. Linking gammah2ax foci and cancer in rat skin exposed to he. The first is the more traditional through focus stack followed by a maximum intensity projection. Foci scoring is performed either manually or semiautomatically using handoperated capturing and image analysis software. H2ax foci and complete dna repair after exogenous dna damage. Results are presented as a mask image, shown in tabular format andor saved to file. H2ax occurred after ion irradiation in various different human and rodent cell lines, including human fibroblasts, the tumour cell line u2os, mef and hamster ovary cells aa8 figure 1ad. H2ax foci in untreated cells as well as in cells exposed to cytotoxic agents is a widely used method for documenting the presence of doublestrand breaks dsbs in the dna and for analysis of. Effects of breast shielding during heart imaging on dna. Thus, the development of assays to detect and to quantitate these lesions could have broad preclinical and clinical impact.
Although the phosphatidylinositol 3kinases, dnapk dna dependent p rotein k inase, atm a taxia t elangiectasia m utated, and atr at m and r ad3related, have all been. We used small interfering rna sirna directed against 53bp1 in mammalian cells to demonstrate that 53bp1 is a key transducer of the dna damage checkpoint signal. The h2ax foci were counted in each cell using imagepro plus media cybernetics. Figure figure3 3 shows the induction of h2ax foci over a 24 h period following exposure to 2 gy gamma radiation. The timecourse of ser9 histone phosphorylation expressed as average value of foci per nucleus and percent of. Gammah2ax foci were quantified by using imagej software in the following sequence. H2ax foci per nucleus in primary human melanocytes. Autofoci, an automated highthroughput foci detection approach for. H2ax foci seem to be essential for the recruitment of repair or signaling. H2ax foci in breast cancer cells exposed to indtpahegf or. Images are acquired in a zseries pattern with a step size of 0.
The imagej version including the cellect tools used for image processing and the software autofoci to automatically count foci. H2ax is implicated in the repair of dna double strand. In addition, an influence of the time point of enumerating. Recently, it has been shown that histone h2ax becomes phosphorylated immediately after exposure to ionising radiation. Gamma h2ax foci were quantified by using imagej software in the following sequence. H2ax foci approximates the number of dsb present in the cells nuclear dna. Phosphorylation of the h2ax protein is an early step in the double strand break dsb repair pathway. A very early step in the response of mammalian cells to dna doublestrand breaks is the phosphorylation of histone h2ax at serine 9 at the sites of dna damage. Here you can download an all platforms version of imagej, without a bundled java or extra extensions. Use the helpupdate imagej command to upgrade to newer versions. Surprisingly, however, quiescent mefs were still capable of forming clear.
Atm phosphorylates histone h2ax in response to dna double. It can display, edit, analyze, process, save and print 8bit, 16bit and 32bit images. Binding of chromatinmodifying activities to phosphorylated histone h2a at dna damage sites. We used imagej as an established platform, as it is an image processing software that is routinely used by many investigators to analyze western.
Gammah2ax biodosimetry for use in large scale radiation. Its central goal is to broaden the paradigm of imagej beyond the limitations of imagej 1. H2ax foci analysis can supplement the early triage of casualties based on clinical symptoms. We previously found that the protein phosphatase pp2a is required to resolve. Radiation therapy is one of the most common and effective strategies used to treat cancer. We show that in addition to foci at damaged sites, h2ax is also phosphorylated in undamaged chromatin over the wholecell nucleus in human and rodent cells, but this is not related to apoptosis. H2ax neither pannuclear nor in foci, whereas the dna damage sites could be visualized via phosphorylated. It runs the findfoci plugin to perform the processing work. Background a better knowledge of patient xray dose and the associated radiation risk in pediatric interventional cardiology is warranted in view of the extensive use of xrays and the higher radiosensitivity of children. The itcn plugin with threshold settings can be downloaded from. When human cells sustain a dna doublestrand break dsb, histone h2ax in chromatin surrounding the dna break is phosphorylated, marking repair foci. Cells respond to dna damage by activating the socalled dna damage response ddr, a complex.
I could almost figure out and learn the steps from it. H2ax stabilizes cellcycle checkpoint proteins and dna repair factors at the break site. The histone h2a variant h2ax is rapidly phosphorylated in response to dna doublestranded breaks to produce. Dec 20, 20 the lysefix protocol can therefore facilitate high throughput processing for.
We compared uv irradiation and treatment with etoposide, an agent. Melanoma cells express elevated levels of phosphorylated. H2ax formation in the adult rat brain following neuronal excitation evoked by seizure activity in vivo. Following a radiation incident, preliminary dose estimates made by. The dna doublestrand break dsb is the primary lethal lesion after therapeutic radiation. Count nuclear foci imagej duke light microscopy core.
Lymphocytes slightly increased the basal level of h2ax phosphorylation at 0. Uv irradiation induces histone variant h2ax phosphorylated on serine 9. G sv40 immortalized skin fibroblast cell line is derived from a phenotypically normal individual with a normal capacity for dna dsb repair. You can also find the borders of the cells by thresholding the image, and then discarding the small objects and closing the result. Following image capture, gen5 automatically preprocessed and stitched the image tiles to remove excess background signal and properly prepare each image for analysis.
To the right, details of same image separately show green upper detail. However, the first generation assay involves the use of immunofluorescent. H2ax foci in blood samples pretreated for 15 minutes 15 before and 60 minutes 60 before with radioprotective agents rp and compared with nontreated controls no rp. Immunocytochemical detection of focal growth during the first 10 min after exposure of early passage wi.
H2ax foci were determined in two normal and two dna dsb repair defective cell lines using 40. H2ax foci as in vivo effect biomarker in children emphasize. May 25, 2011 the phosphorylated form of histone h2a. H2ax foci per cell of dapi stained cells in imagej. Open source bioimage informatics tools for the analysis of dna. Computational analysis of the number, area and density of. I performed if to find gamma h2ax foci in mammalian cell with different concentration of h2o2.
H2ax foci can be detected with a doselength product as low as 0. Sample processing time is important when many individuals need to be rapidly assessed. H2ax foci may persist on resolved coding junctions as residual footprints of already completed vd j recombination. H2a histone family member x usually abbreviated as h2ax is a type of histone protein from the h2a family encoded by the h2afx gene. Immunocytochemical detection of foci in 10m frozen sections of liver and testes from young 3 months and old 24 months mice, images shown are collapsed z. H2ax staining without foci, but the significance of this finding is still uncertain. H2ax foci formation as a pharmacodynamic marker of dna. A setting that excluded relatively weak foci and back. H2ax foci was associated with a 60fold increase in the amount of h2ax within 1 hr after 100 ngml ncs treatment.
However, i am still confused a little bit about the those folloing steps. H2ax, is not homogeneously spread in the cell nucleus but forms foci. H2ax is a sensitive marker for dna doublestrand breaks dsbs, but the variability of h2ax expression in different cell and tissue types makes it difficult to interpret the meaning of the. H2ax foci counts agrees well for both quantification methods manually, automated, respectively.
I clicked on the fluorecence intensity measurement and counting then on focirb, it then open a dialog box to select the image, i select my h2ax staining picture. Foci for both markers arise at dsb sites, causing signal to appear yellowish because of overlap in merged image. H2ax green and 53bp1 red foci in nuclei blue, dna of peripheral blood leukocytes of p22 at 2 h after administration of 3. Count nuclear foci imagej duke light microscopy core facility. The influence of xray contrast agents in computed tomography. Ijms free fulltext highly sensitive automated method for. H2ax foci as a biomarker for patient xray exposure in. Patientspecific dose was assessed and radiation risks were estimated according.