Scoring the activity of cytoplasmic transport of myosin II. The activity of the centrosome-directed cytoplasmic transport of myosin II was scored by analyzing the trajectories of the myosin II particles, which need correction for the movement of the whole aster toward the cortex. Only the movement away from the cell cortex was considered. All the particles detected were consolidated across the embryos, and the cumulative sums are presented in the main figures. (A) Illustration of the relative geometry of a moving particle, the neaby spindle pole/centrosome and the cell cortex. (B–D) Examples of the particles that showed (left) or didn't show (right) a centrosome-directed motion on each step of analysis. (B) Raw (x, y) coordinates. (C) Centrosome-directed component of the motion and smoothing. (D) Calculation of the transport activity. (E and F) Summary accross multiple embryos before (E) and after (F) cumulative summation through time. (E) Thin dotted lines represent the sum of the particle transport activities within individual embryos. Thick lines represent the sum of them across the spd-1(RNAi) (red) and the control (gray) embryos, respectively. (F) Mean cumulative sums of the transport activities in the spd-1(RNAi) (red) and the control (gray) embryos with SEM. See Materials and methods for details.