Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Mechanism of Ciliary Motion

Mechanism of Ciliary Motion

The ciliary structures were first seen in 1647 by Antonie Leeuwenhoek while observing the protozoans. In lower organisms, these appendages are responsible for cell movement, while in higher organisms, these appendages help in the movement of the extracellular fluids within the body cavities.
The cilia are made up of microtubules in a 9+2 arrangement, with nine microtubule doublet ring bundles, surrounding a pair of central singlet microtubule bundles. The doublet microtubule bundles are...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Dynamic switching of cell-substrate contact sites allows gliding diatoms to modulate the curvature of their paths.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·2026

Same author

A. James Hudspeth (1945-2025): A pioneer in the biology and physics of hearing.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·2026

Same author

A correlative quantitative phase contrast and fluorescence super-resolution microscope for imaging molecules in their cellular context.

bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology·2025

Same author

Elastic analysis bridges structure and dynamics of an AAA+ molecular motor.

PLoS computational biology·2025

Same author

Global comparative structural analysis of responses to protein phosphorylation.

Nature communications·2025

Same author

Thermodynamic dissipation constrains metabolic versatility of unicellular growth.

Nature communications·2025

Same journal

Simple input-output dependencies explain neuronal activity.

Nature physics·2026

Same journal

Scaling and self-similarity in the formation of the embryonic epigenome.

Nature physics·2026

Same journal

Adhesion-driven rigidity transition decoupled from density-driven jamming triggers epithelial organization in embryonic tissues.

Nature physics·2026

Same journal

The local mechanostructural properties of protein cargoes regulate nucleocytoplasmic transport.

Nature physics·2026

Same journal

Squeezing, trisqueezing and quadsqueezing in a hybrid oscillator-spin system.

Nature physics·2026

Same journal

Noise-induced shallow circuits and the absence of barren plateaus.

Nature physics·2026

See all related articles

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Sep 16, 2025

Observation of the Ciliary Movement of Choroid Plexus Epithelial Cells Ex Vivo

Observation of the Ciliary Movement of Choroid Plexus Epithelial Cells Ex Vivo

Published on: July 13, 2015

Ciliary beating patterns map onto a low-dimensional behavioural space.

Veikko F Geyer¹, Jonathon Howard², Pablo Sartori³

¹B CUBE-Center for Molecular Bioengineering, Technische Universität Dresden, Dresden, Germany.

|July 11, 2025

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Biological systems exhibit robustness and variability. Analyzing cilia dynamics revealed that waveform shapes are governed by only two key features, simplifying complex behaviors.

More Related Videos

Automated Charting of the Visual Space of Housefly Compound Eyes

Automated Charting of the Visual Space of Housefly Compound Eyes

Published on: March 31, 2022

Automated Visual Cognitive Tasks for Recording Neural Activity Using a Floor Projection Maze

Automated Visual Cognitive Tasks for Recording Neural Activity Using a Floor Projection Maze

Published on: February 20, 2014

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Sep 16, 2025

Observation of the Ciliary Movement of Choroid Plexus Epithelial Cells Ex Vivo

Observation of the Ciliary Movement of Choroid Plexus Epithelial Cells Ex Vivo

Published on: July 13, 2015

Automated Charting of the Visual Space of Housefly Compound Eyes

Automated Charting of the Visual Space of Housefly Compound Eyes

Published on: March 31, 2022

Automated Visual Cognitive Tasks for Recording Neural Activity Using a Floor Projection Maze

Automated Visual Cognitive Tasks for Recording Neural Activity Using a Floor Projection Maze

Published on: February 20, 2014

Area of Science:

Cell Biology
Biophysics
Systems Biology

Background:

Biological systems display functional robustness despite genetic and environmental perturbations.
This interplay is evident in cilia and flagella motility, which remain functional across diverse conditions.
Perturbations can lead to a wide range of spatio-temporal beating patterns, creating a rich behavioral space.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the behavioral space of cilia.
To understand the relationship between functional robustness and behavioral variability in cilia.
To identify the key factors governing cilia waveform shape variation.

Main Methods:

Analysis of isolated cilia dynamics from *Chlamydomonas reinhardtii*.
Experimentation under varied genetic and environmental conditions (e.g., temperature, viscosity, ATP/calcium levels).
Mathematical modeling using a simple mechanochemical model in the low-viscosity regime.

Main Results:

Cilia waveform shapes occupy a low-dimensional behavioral space.
Two principal features explain approximately 80% of the observed waveform variation.
The observed geometry of the behavioral space aligns with predictions from a mechanochemical model.
Waveform variability is linked to alterations in dynein motor curvature response coefficients.

Conclusions:

Cilia exhibit a surprisingly simple underlying structure governing their complex movements.
The low-dimensional nature of cilia waveform shapes simplifies our understanding of their motor control.
Mechanochemical models can effectively predict and explain cilia behavior under specific conditions.