Cilia and flagella are slender cellular appendages that have motile, sensory and regulatory roles. They drive the movement of cells through fluids, thereby powering the swimming of spermatozoa and ciliated microorganisms, and they drive the movement of fluid past cells, thereby generating fluid and mucus flows in the airways, reproductive tracts and the brain. My group is interested in understanding how cilia and flagella move. Our central hypothesis is that axonemal dyneins, in addition to generating force, also sense force. Specifically, we postulate that the forces and/or strains that build up during beating, feed back on the dyneins and coordinate their activities across and along the axoneme. To explore these feedback mechanisms we are using a combination of high-resolution imaging of isolated intact axonemes, single-molecule studies on purified axonemal dyneins and tubulin, and mathematical modeling. We have chosen the unicellular alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii as our model system due to the ease of reactivating the axoneme, the facility for purifying axonemal proteins and the availability of mutants.
Lunch @ 11:45, talk @ 12pm.