Chapter 7: Planarian Cilia
Planarian Cilia
This movie shows the ventral ciliated epithelium of the planarian Schmidtea mediterranea. The upper panel is from an animal fed a control vector where the cilia beat in synchronous metachronal waves at ~24 Hz. The middle and lower panels are of planarians knocked down for outer arm dynein IC2 (do not assemble outer arms) or which are defective for LC1 (but still assemble outer arms). The lack of just LC1 or the entire outer arm both result in a reduction of beat frequency (to ~10 Hz), frequent ciliary stalling and an inability to coordinate waveforms through hydrodynamic coupling. The movie is played at 1/10 real time. From Rompolas et al (2010) Mol Biol Cell 21, 3669-3679.
