Time lapse microscopy images of Saccharomyces cerevisiae's full life cycle

The life cycles of biomedical and agriculturally relevant eukaryotic
microorganisms involve complex transitions between proliferative and
non-proliferative states, such as dormancy, mating, meiosis, and cell
division. New drugs, pesticides, and vaccines can be created by targeting
specific life cycle stages of parasites and pathogens. However, defining
the structure of a microbial life cycle often relies on partial
observations that are theoretically assembled in an ideal life cycle path.
To create a more quantitative approach to studying complete eukaryotic
life cycles, we generated a microfluidic assay to record the complete
sexual life cycle of the model eukaryote Saccharomyces cerevisiae for up
to three sexual life cycles. This data set contains TIF image files from
the time-lapse imaging of the complete S. cerevisiae life cycle. We
envision that it will be used to benchmark new single-cell processing
algorithms and as a starting point for quantitatively characterizing other
single-cell eukaryotic life cycles that remain incompletely described. The
data can be processed using any image analysis software. We also developed
the Python package yeastvision, which provides a user interface that
allows free access to our image processing and single-cell tracking
algorithms for complete life cycle analyses.