Fifty years of microtubule sliding in cilia

• Type of Material: Article
• Authors: Stephen M. King, University of Connecticut; Winfield S Sale, Emory University
• Language: English
• Date: 2018-03-15
• Publisher: American Society for Cell Biology
• Publication Version: Final Published Version
• Copyright Statement: © 2018 King and Sale
• License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported
• Final Published Version (URL): http://dx.doi.org/10.1091/mbc.E17-07-0483
• Title of Journal or Parent Work: Molecular Biology of the Cell
• ISSN: 1059-1524
• Volume: 29
• Issue: 6
• Start Page: 698
• End Page: 701
• Grant/Funding Information: This work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (GM051293 to S.M.K. and GM051173 to W.S.S.).
• Keywords: ADENOSINE-TRIPHOSPHATASE ACTIVITY; Life Sciences & Biomedicine; TETRAHYMENA CILIA; BENDING WAVES; SEA-URCHIN SPERM; DYNEIN ARM; MECHANISM; CRYOELECTRON TOMOGRAPHY; FLAGELLAR MOVEMENT; FILAMENT MODEL; PROPAGATION; Science & Technology; Cell Biology
• Research Categories: Biology, Molecular; Biophysics, General

Abstract

Motility of cilia (also known as flagella in some eukaryotes) is based on axonemal doublet microtubule sliding that is driven by the dynein molecular motors. Dyneins are organized into intricately patterned inner and outer rows of arms, whose collective activity is to produce inter-microtubule movement. However, to generate a ciliary bend, not all dyneins can be active simultaneously. The switch point model accounts, in part, for how dynein motors are regulated during ciliary movement. On the basis of this model, supported by key direct experimental observations as well as more recent theoretical and structural studies, we are now poised to understand the mechanics of how ciliary dynein coordination controls axonemal bend formation and propagation.