Power-Limited Contraction Dynamics of Vorticella convallaria: An Ultrafast Biological Spring
نویسندگان
چکیده
منابع مشابه
Power-limited contraction dynamics of Vorticella convallaria: an ultrafast biological spring.
Vorticella convallaria is one of the fastest and most powerful cellular machines. The cell body is attached to a substrate by a slender stalk containing a polymeric structure-the spasmoneme. Helical coiling of the stalk results from rapid contraction of the spasmoneme, an event mediated by calcium binding to a negatively charged polymeric backbone. We use high speed imaging to measure the contr...
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Advisor: Sangjin Ryu Vorticella convallaria is a genus of protozoa living in fresh water. It has a bell-shaped zooid equipped with adoral ciliary bands and a contractile stalk tethering the zooid to a substrate. Vorticella is regarded as a biological spring because its contractile stalk can pull the zooid towards the substrate at a remarkably high speed and then relaxes to its extended state mu...
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Contraction of Vorticella convallaria, a sessile ciliated protozoan, is completed within a few milliseconds and results in a retraction of its cell body toward the substratum by coiling its stalk. Previous studies have modeled the cell body as a sphere and assumed a drag force that satisfies Stokes' law. However, the contraction-induced flow of the medium is transient and bounded by the substra...
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The millisecond stalk contraction of the sessile ciliate Vorticella convallaria is powered by energy from Ca(2+) binding to generate contractile forces of ∼10 nN. Its contractile organelle, the spasmoneme, generates higher contractile force under increased stall resistances. By applying viscous drag force to contracting V. convallaria in a microfluidic channel, we observed that the mechanical f...
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1. Vorticella extracted with Triton X-100 contracted (i.e. the cell body shrank and the stalk coiled) when the external Ca2+ concentration was raised. The degree of contraction increased with increasing Ca2+ concentration. 2. The threshold Ca2+ concentration for shrinkage of the cell body was identical with that for coiling of the stalk in Vorticella extracted with Triton X-100. 3. Living Vorti...
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ژورنال
عنوان ژورنال: Biophysical Journal
سال: 2008
ISSN: 0006-3495
DOI: 10.1529/biophysj.107.108852