Movement of the Flagella of Poly Tom a Well A

Hoffman-Berling (1955) and other workers have shown that flagella and cilia from a variety of organisms can be sensitized to adenosine triphosphate (ATP) by treatment with glycerol in a manner analogous to the preparation of glycerol-extracted muscle fibres. In most cases the movement obtained upon reactivation by ATP is a localized oscillating bending, without progression through the suspending medium (Bishop, 1962). On the other hand, studies of the movement of normal flagella have shown that active bending occurs along the length of the flagellum (Gray, 1955; Machin, 1958) and is somehow co-ordinated to yield propagated bending waves which produce a propulsive effect. Flagella isolated from the alga, Polytoma uvella, by glycerol treatment have been reported previously to show propagated bending waves and forward progression when reactivated in media containing ATP (Brokaw, 1961, 1962). In the case of Polytoma, at least part of the co-ordinated bending of active elements along the length of the flagellum appears to survive the glycerol-isolation procedure, so that all the significant features of normal flagellar movement can be studied with this isolated flagella preparation. A more detailed analysis of these movements, based on photographic records of the movement of isolated flagella, is given in the present paper. Photographs of flagella on intact cells of Polytoma have been included for comparison, since previous descriptions of the movements of flagella of Polytoma (Ulehla, 1911; Lowndes, 1941) were not based on identical methods of observation.