Quality Control for Single Cell Imaging Analytics Using Endocrine Disruptor-Induced Changes in Estrogen Receptor Expression

Diverse toxicants and mixtures that affect hormone responsive cells [endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs)] are highly pervasive in the environment and are directly linked to human disease. They often target the nuclear receptor family of transcription factors modulating their levels and activity. Many high-throughput assays have been developed to query such toxicants; however, single-cell analysis of EDC effects on endogenous receptors has been missing, in part due to the lack of quality control metrics to reproducibly measure cell-to-cell variability in responses.

We demonstrated that the distribution of ER levels per cell, and the changes upon chemical challenges were remarkably stable features; and importantly, these features could be used for quality control and identification of endocrine disruptor toxicants with high sensitivity. When coupled with orthogonal assays, ER single cell distribution is a valuable resource for high-throughput screening of environmental toxicants. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP9297.

We used high-throughput microscopy, coupled with image analytics to measure changes in single cell ER nuclear levels on treatment with ∼100<math><mrow><mo>∼</mo><mn>100</mn></mrow></math> toxicants, over a large number of biological and technical replicates.

We began by developing single-cell imaging and informatic workflows to query whether the single cell distribution of the estrogen receptor-α<math><mrow><mtext>receptor-</mtext><mi>α</mi></mrow></math> (ER), used as a model system, can be used to measure effects of EDCs in a sensitive and reproducible manner.

We developed a two-tiered quality control pipeline for single cell analysis and tested it against a large set of biological replicates, and toxicants from the EPA and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry lists. We also identified a subset of potentially novel EDCs that were active only on the endogenous ER level and activity as measured by single molecule RNA fluorescence in situ hybridization (RNA FISH).