BACKGROUND The transport of gametes as well as the zygote is facilitated by motile cilia lining the inside of the fallopian tube. Progesterone reduces the ciliary beat frequency within 30 minutes in both cows and mice. This rapid reduction suggest the involvement of a non-genomic signaling mechanism, although it is not known which receptors that are involved. Here we investigated the possible i...

Hazardous and unhealthy environmental changes are rising continuously in modern society due to rapid industrialization and urbanization. In addition to environmental contamination, interest on electromagnetic wave(EMF) is also increasing. EMF is reported in a lot of papers to cause DNA damage, infertility, oxidative stress, cell cycle change, apoptosis, gene expression abnormality, tumorigenesi...

BACKGROUND Whereas cilia damage and reduced cilia beat frequency have been implicated as causative of reduced mucociliary clearance in smokers, theoretically mucociliary clearance could also be affected by cilia length. Based on models of mucociliary clearance predicting that cilia length must exceed the 6-7 microm airway surface fluid depth to generate force in the mucus layer, we hypothesized...

Airway mucociliary clearance is a first-line defense of the lung against inhaled particles and debris. Among individuals with alcohol use disorders, there is an increase in lung diseases. We previously identified that prolonged alcohol exposure impairs mucociliary clearance, known as alcohol-induced ciliary dysfunction (AICD). Cilia-localized enzymes, known as the ciliary metabolon, are key to ...

Abstract Biological systems are robust to perturbations at both the genetic and environmental levels, although these same can elicit variation in behaviour. The interplay between functional robustness behavioural variability is exemplified organellar level by beating of cilia flagella. Cilia motile despite wide diversity within species, differences intracellular concentrations ATP calcium, cons...

Ciliary beating of airway epithelial cells drives the removal of mucus and particles from the airways. Mucociliary transport and possibly airway epithelial development are governed by muscarinic acetylcholine receptors but the precise roles of the subtypes involved are unknown. This issue was addressed by determining cilia-driven particle transport, ciliary beat frequency, and the composition a...

BACKGROUND Primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) is a clinically uniform entity, but cilia motility and structure can vary between patients, making the diagnostic difficult. The aim of this study was to evaluate the sensitivity and specificity in diagnosing PCD of a system of high-resolution digital high-speed video analysis with proprietary software that we developed for analysis of ciliary motilit...

Nonmotile primary cilia are recognized as important sensory organelles during development and normal biological functioning. For example, recent work demonstrates that transcriptional regulators of the sonic hedgehog signaling pathway localize to primary cilia and participate in sensing and transducing signals regarding the cellular environment. In contrast, motile cilia are traditionally viewe...

Cilia are small organelles protruding from the cell surface that beat synchronously, producing biological transport. Despite intense research for over a century, the mechanisms underlying ciliary beating are still not well understood. Even the nature of the cytosolic molecules required for spontaneous and stimulated beating is debatable. In an effort to resolve fundamental questions related to ...

Propulsion by cilia is a fascinating and universal mechanism in biological organisms to generate fluid motion on the cellular level. Cilia are hair-like organelles, which are found in many different tissues and many uni- and multicellular organisms. Assembled in large fields, cilia beat neither randomly nor completely synchronously--instead they display a striking self-organization in the form ...