Berlin 2018 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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BP: Fachverband Biologische Physik

BP 15: Postersession III

BP 15.90: Poster

Dienstag, 13. März 2018, 14:00–16:00, Poster B

How molecular motors generate the ciliary beat — •Veikko F. Geyer.^1,4, Pablo Sartori², Frank Jülicher³, and Jonathon Howard⁴ — ¹B CUBE , TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany — ²Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, USA — ³MPI-PKS, Dresden, Germany — ⁴Department of Molecular Biophysics, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA

Cilia and flagella are slender organelles of eukaryotic cells. They are ubiquitous in nature propeling mucus along the respiratory epithelium, generate chiral flows in Henson's node and propel micro-swimmers like sperm or alga. The cilium is a mechanical beat-pattern-generator composed of molecular motors and cytoskeletal filaments. Cells can regulate beat patters to accommodate specific functions. Examples are the conversion of pushing forces into pulling forces or the change of the chirality of flows. To understand how beat-patterns are generated on the molecular level, we record the waveforms of cilia of the green alga Chlamydomonas Reinhardtii using high-speed microscopy. We perform theoretical analysis of the beats and investigate how waveform changes relate to cell propulsion. We formulate mechanical models of the axoneme to address the question of (1) how molecular motors are controlled and (2) how force deforms the axonemal structure. Together, we investigate how the molecular properties of micro-motors and cytoskeletal filaments give rise to self-organized ciliary beating and to cell-propulsion and cilia-generated flows.