PMID:18236120

From EcoliWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Citation

Yang, X, Dillon, RH and Fauci, LJ (2008) An integrative computational model of multiciliary beating. Bull. Math. Biol. 70:1192-215

Abstract

The coordinated beating of motile cilia is responsible for ovum transport in the oviduct, transport of mucus in the respiratory tract, and is the basis of motility in many single-celled organisms. The beating of a single motile cilium is achieved by the ATP-driven activation cycles of thousands of dynein molecular motors that cause neighboring microtubule doublets within the ciliary axoneme to slide relative to each other. The precise nature of the spatial and temporal coordination of these individual motors is still not completely understood. The emergent geometry and dynamics of ciliary beating is a consequence of the coupling of these internal force-generating motors, the passive elastic properties of the axonemal structure, and the external viscous, incompressible fluid. Here, we extend our integrative model of a single cilium that couples internal force generation with the surrounding fluid to the investigation of multiciliary interaction. This computational model allows us to predict the geometry of beating, along with the detailed description of the time-dependent flow field both near and away from the cilia. We show that synchrony and metachrony can, indeed, arise from hydrodynamic coupling. We also investigate the effects of viscosity and neighboring cilia on ciliary beat frequency. Moreover, since we have precise flow information, we also measure the dependence of the total flow pumped per cilium per beat upon parameters such as viscosity and ciliary spacing.

Links

PubMed Online version:10.1007/s11538-008-9296-3

Keywords

Animals; Biophysical Phenomena; Biophysics; Cilia/physiology; Female; Male; Mathematics; Models, Biological; Molecular Motor Proteins/physiology; Movement; Viscosity

Significance

You can help EcoliWiki by summarizing why this paper is useful

Useful Materials and Methods

You can help Ecoliwiki by describing the useful materials (strains, plasmids, antibodies, etc) described in this paper.

Annotations

<annotationlinks/>

EcoliWiki Links

Add links to pages that link here (e.g. gene, product, method pages)

References

See Help:References for how to manage references in EcoliWiki.