A mathematical and mechanical model of the flagellar motility of Chlamydomonas

Xingzhou Yang

Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics, Center for Computational Sciences, Mississippi State University, MS 39762, USA

Chlamydomonas is a tiny unicellular green alga with two hair-like flagella for propelling the cell body through its fluid environment. The flagella with both sensory and motility functions are very similar to animal cilia, which makes Chlamydomonas an outstanding model organism to study. In recent years, Chlamydomonas has been intensively used for the study of numerous fundamental biological processes in cell and molecular biology, including cilia-pathology in the human health. However the mechanism governing the bi-flagellar motilities is still poorly understood. We present a fluid-dynamical model, using computational approaches, that examine swimming and a variety of the bi-flagellar motilities of Chlamydomonas. This model couples the time-dependent fluid dynamics and the internal force generation mechanism by ATP-induced molecular motor proteins.

e-mail address of presenting author: xyang@math.msstate.edu

web site: http://xy51.math.msstate.edu/