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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Motile cilia are cell organelles able to exert a net force onto a liquid; they are highly conserved across eukaryotes, and enable a variety of functions from the motility of single cell organisms to flow that carries nutrients to our brains. A fascinating process takes place in mammalian airways: a carpet of motile cilia maintains the cell surface free of pathogens and particles by continuously refreshing and clearing a barrier of mucus. In order for this `muco-ciliary clearance' to be effective, cilia motion needs to be phase-locked across significant distances, in the form of a travelling wave, and it is not known how this is achieved.
Our lab is currently approaching this question from two directions: recently we have begun imaging ciliated cell carpets, quantifying the spatial and temporal coherence in the dynamics, and perturbing the system; we aim to match the understanding gained at that level with our previous work on model systems, which informed us of the importance of hydrodynamic coupling between driven oscillators, as a mechanism sufficient to establish collective large-scale dynamical patterns.
