Bottlenecks often occur during data analysis when studying microbial growth in liquid culture at large scale. A researcher can collect thousands of growth curves, repeated measures of a microbial liquid culture, at once in multiple micro titer plates by purpose-built robotic instruments. However, it can be difficult and time-consuming to inspect and analyze these data. This is especially true for researchers without programming experience. To enable this researcher, we created and describe an interactive application: Automated Usher for Data Inspection and Tidying (AUDIT). It allows the user to analyze growth curve data generated from one or more runs each with one or more micro titer plates alongside their experimental design. AUDIT covers input, pre-processing, summarizing, visual exploration and output. Compared to previously available tools AUDIT handles more data, provides live previews and is built from individually re-usable pieces distributed as R packages.

Linker histones play a fundamental role in shaping chromatin structure, but how their interaction with chromatin is regulated is not well understood. In this study, we used a combination of genetic and genomic approaches to explore the regulation of linker histone binding in the yeast, We found that increased expression of Hho1, the yeast linker histone, resulted in a severe growth defect, despite only subtle changes in chromatin structure. Further, this growth defect was rescued by mutations that increase histone acetylation. Consistent with this, genome-wide analysis of linker histone occupancy revealed an inverse correlation with histone tail acetylation in both yeast and mouse embryonic stem cells. Collectively, these results suggest that histone acetylation negatively regulates linker histone binding in and other organisms and provide important insight into how chromatin structure is regulated and maintained to both facilitate and repress transcription.

New technologies have powered rapid advances in cellular imaging, genomics and phenotypic analysis in life sciences. However, most of these methods operate at sample population levels and provide statistical averages of aggregated data that fail to capture single-cell heterogeneity, complicating drug discovery and development. Here we demonstrate a new single-cell approach based on convex lens-induced confinement (CLiC) microscopy. We validated CLiC on yeast cells, demonstrating subcellular localization with an enhanced signal-to-noise and fluorescent signal detection sensitivity compared with traditional imaging. In the live-cell CLiC assay, cellular proliferation times were consistent with flask culture. Using methotrexate, we provide drug response data showing a fivefold cell size increase following drug exposure. Taken together, CLiC enables high-quality imaging of single-cell drug response and proliferation for extended observation periods.