Length regulation of multiple flagella that self-assemble from a shared pool of components
- Brandeis University, United States
- Harvard University, United States
Abstract
The single-celled green algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii with its two flagella - microtubule-based structures of equal and constant lengths - is the canonical model organism for studying size control of organelles. Experiments have identified motor-driven transport of tubulin to the flagella tips as a key component of their length control. Here we consider a class of models whose key assumption is that proteins responsible for the intraflagellar transport (IFT) of tubulin are present in limiting amounts. We show that the limiting-pool assumption is insufficient to describe the results of severing experiments, in which a flagellum is regenerated after it has been severed. Next, we consider an extension of the limiting-pool model that incorporates proteins that depolymerize microtubules. We show that this 'active disassembly' model of flagellar length control explains in quantitative detail the results of severing experiments and use it to make predictions that can be tested in experiments.
Data availability
All data analyzed during this study is contained in the published studies cited in the references. Source code of the simulations used in our work can be found here: https://github.com/pkar96/Agent-based-simulation.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
National Science Foundation (CAREER 1752024)
- Ariel Amir
National Science Foundation (DMS-1502851)
- Thomas G Fai
National Science Foundation (DMR-1610737)
- Jane Kondev
National Science Foundation (MRSEC-1420382)
- Jane Kondev
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- Ariel Amir
Kavli Foundation
- Ariel Amir
Simons Foundation
- Jane Kondev
Simons Foundation
- Lishibanya Mohapatra
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2019, Fai et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 2,467
- views
-
- 361
- downloads
-
- 30
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Citations by DOI
-
- 30
- citations for umbrella DOI https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.42599
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
Length regulation of multiple flagella that self-assemble from a shared pool of components
eLife 8:e42599.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.42599
