Ciliary chemosensitivity is enhanced by cilium geometry and motility
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Evaluation Summary:
The authors consider how the geometry and motility of cilia affect their performance in detecting chemicals in the surrounding fluid. Based on a theoretical model, the authors suggest that the distinctive elongated shape of a cilium may be coupled to its sensory function. The conjectures presented in this work are likely to be of interest to a wide readership, but whether this actually applies to real biological systems requires more careful validation.
(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. The reviewers remained anonymous to the authors.)
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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 ∼4× its surface area. When the cilium is exposed to an external shear flow, the equivalent surface area increases to ∼6×. 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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Reviewer #2 (Public Review):
Certain biological structures have evolved to attain certain forms that may enhance their function. The authors suggest that the shape of a cilium can enhance its sensory function in both quiescent fluid and shear flow, and compared the extent of this enhancement in a number of representative settings. This simple yet compelling possibility has not been explored in detail previously, and is deserving of further attention from both theoretical and experimental perspectives.
The present work is clearly a step in the right direction, proposing a quantitative framework and systematic approach to address this problem. The authors first extended the classical study by Berg and Purcell for spherical absorbers to prolate spheroids with slender aspect ratio, and compared this with a circular patch, showing the …
Reviewer #2 (Public Review):
Certain biological structures have evolved to attain certain forms that may enhance their function. The authors suggest that the shape of a cilium can enhance its sensory function in both quiescent fluid and shear flow, and compared the extent of this enhancement in a number of representative settings. This simple yet compelling possibility has not been explored in detail previously, and is deserving of further attention from both theoretical and experimental perspectives.
The present work is clearly a step in the right direction, proposing a quantitative framework and systematic approach to address this problem. The authors first extended the classical study by Berg and Purcell for spherical absorbers to prolate spheroids with slender aspect ratio, and compared this with a circular patch, showing the effectiveness of a cilium as a receptor. They then incorporated shear flow, showing that the cilium again outperforms a patch. Finally, they considered the case of an actively beating cilium or a motile bundle - a case which may be important for symmetry breaking in the vertebrate node.
However, a weakness of the current set-up is that it is highly idealised. To improve the overall impact and biological relevance of this work more careful analysis and simulations would be needed.
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Reviewer #1 (Public Review):
The authors consider the effects of the cilium geometry and motility on its performance in detecting chemicals in the surrounding fluid. They begin by presenting a classic solution of the diffusion equation in an infinite fluid domain at rest, bounded internally by a single cilium. The cilium is modeled as a cylinder of finite length and perfectly absorbing boundary. They compare the capture rate of ambient chemicals at the cilium boundary to that of an absorbing circular patch on a reflecting wall of similar surface area. The latter is another classic solution of the diffusion equation. They find that the capture rate by the cilium exceeds the capture rate by the circular patch. Then, they solve the advection-diffusion equation around the cilium numerically, assuming perfectly absorbing boundary conditions …
Reviewer #1 (Public Review):
The authors consider the effects of the cilium geometry and motility on its performance in detecting chemicals in the surrounding fluid. They begin by presenting a classic solution of the diffusion equation in an infinite fluid domain at rest, bounded internally by a single cilium. The cilium is modeled as a cylinder of finite length and perfectly absorbing boundary. They compare the capture rate of ambient chemicals at the cilium boundary to that of an absorbing circular patch on a reflecting wall of similar surface area. The latter is another classic solution of the diffusion equation. They find that the capture rate by the cilium exceeds the capture rate by the circular patch. Then, they solve the advection-diffusion equation around the cilium numerically, assuming perfectly absorbing boundary conditions along the cilium and reflecting boundary conditions on the wall. They apply this numerical framework to cases (i) where cilium is at rest in an external shear flow, (ii) where the cilium is actively beating, and (iii) where a bundle of hydrodynamically-interacting cilia are either at rest or actively beating. They observe an increase in capture rate when shear flows and motility are accounted for.
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Evaluation Summary:
The authors consider how the geometry and motility of cilia affect their performance in detecting chemicals in the surrounding fluid. Based on a theoretical model, the authors suggest that the distinctive elongated shape of a cilium may be coupled to its sensory function. The conjectures presented in this work are likely to be of interest to a wide readership, but whether this actually applies to real biological systems requires more careful validation.
(This preprint has been reviewed by eLife. We include the public reviews from the reviewers here; the authors also receive private feedback with suggested changes to the manuscript. The reviewers remained anonymous to the authors.)
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