Motility of basal fragments of sea urchin sperm flagella.

Both live and reactivated sea urchin sperm flagella were broken by passage through a pipette. Distal fragments stopped, but basal fragments continued to beat. Intact flagella were about 48 micrometer long; basal fragments were about 4-20 micrometer long. Beat periods of tritonated fragments were 11% shorter than those of unbroken controls, possibly reflecting decreased viscous loading; beat periods of live fragments were 18% shorter than those of unbroken controls, possibly reflecting reduced rates of ATP consumption as well as decreased viscous loading. The undulations of basal fragments were compared with those of the basal regions of unbroken flagella, using the patterns of development of the radii and angles of basal bends. Fragments closely resembled basal regions of unbroken flagella, except that bends tended to open as they approached the distal end of a fragment, so that their radii increased more rapidly than those unbroken flagella. Fragments about 4 micrometer long contained only one bend during part of the cycle, and appeared to be straight during part of the cycle. They flipped back and forth with fairly constant angular speeds and abrupt changes in direction, so that plots of angle between their distal end and base often resembled triangular waves, although the peaks of the waveforms were often rounded. This behaviour suggests a mechanism in which sliding switches between 2 modes. Both the speed of sliding and the maximum angles attained in one direction of bending were greater than those attained in the other direction, suggesting differences between the doublets on the 2 sides of the axoneme. Sliding of the doublets continued as fast speeds as the fragments straightened, in contrast to the characteristics of some curvature-sensitive models. These flagellar fragments provide a simplified system for the study of flagellar oscillations.