Ciliary chemosensitivity is enhanced by cilium geometry and motility

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Abstract

Cilia are hairlike organelles involved in both sensory functions and motility. We discuss the question of whether the location of chemical receptors on cilia provides an advantage in terms of sensitivity and whether motile sensory cilia have a further advantage. Using a simple advection-diffusion model, we compute the capture rates of diffusive molecules on a cilium. Because of its geometry, a non-motile cilium in a quiescent fluid has a capture rate equivalent to a circular absorbing region with ~4x its surface area. When the cilium is exposed to an external shear flow, the equivalent surface area increases to ~6x. Alternatively, if the cilium beats in a non-reciprocal way in an otherwise quiescent fluid, its capture rate increases with the beating frequency to the power of 1/3. Altogether, our results show that the protruding geometry of a cilium could be one of the reasons why so many receptors are located on cilia. They also point to the advantage of combining motility with chemical reception.

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All data generated or analysed during this study are included in the manuscript and supporting files. Source data files have been provided for Figures 3 and 4.

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David Hickey

Living Matter Physics, Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Göttingen, Germany

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.
Andrej Vilfan

Living Matter Physics, Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Göttingen, Germany

For correspondence
andrej.vilfan@ds.mpg.de

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0001-8985-6072
Ramin Golestanian

Department of Living Matter Physics, Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Goettingen, Germany

For correspondence
Ramin.Golestanian@ds.mpg.de

Competing interests
The authors declare that no competing interests exist.

"This ORCID iD identifies the author of this article:" 0000-0002-3149-4002

Funding

Max-Planck-Gesellschaft

David Hickey
Andrej Vilfan
Ramin Golestanian

Javna Agencija za Raziskovalno Dejavnost RS (P1-0099)

Andrej Vilfan

The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.

Copyright

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.