MSc student applications are invited for the following internship project in bioinformatics:

Project title: “Programming a MatLAB script for the detection and quantification of spontaneous intracellular Ca2+ rises”

The project is embedded in a larger research initiative which aims to discover new signaling pathways that underlie the seemingly spontaneous release of neurotransmitters from mouse neurons (see Groffen et al., Science, 2010). Starting from time-lapse movies from nerve cells containing highly sensitive Ca2+ dyes (available from the start of the project), the student’s aim will be to deliver a script that detects sudden changes in pixel intensities. For each such event, the script will produce the following:

– x,y coordinates of the region of interest,
– time of the event start, peak and end,
– a plot of pixel intensity over time,
– kinetic parameters (rise time, decay time)
– peak amplitude (deltaF/F0),
– a montage containing sequential image details containing the ROI

Finally, the most important parameters will be averaged for each movie. Students with experience in MatLAB programming are encouraged to apply via email (a.j.a.groffen@vu.nl).