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Updated: Jun 18, 2026

Biophysical Characterization of Flagellar Motor Functions
Published on: January 18, 2017
Noise and synchronization in pairs of beating eukaryotic flagella
Raymond E Goldstein1, Marco Polin, Idan Tuval
1Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, Wilberforce Road, Cambridge CB3 0WA, United Kingdom.
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It has long been conjectured that hydrodynamic interactions between beating eukaryotic flagella underlie their ubiquitous forms of synchronization; yet there has been no experimental test of this connection. The biflagellate alga Chlamydomonas is a simple model for such studies, as its two flagella are representative of those most commonly found in eukaryotes. Using micromanipulation and high-speed imaging, we show that the flagella of a C. reinhardtii cell present periods of synchronization interrupted by phase slips. The dynamics of slips and the statistics of phase-locked intervals are consistent with a low-dimensional stochastic model of hydrodynamically coupled oscillators, with a noise amplitude set by the intrinsic fluctuations of single flagellar beats.
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