Biology Commons^™

Chlamydomonas Mutants Display Reversible Deficiencies In Flagellar Beating And Axonemal Assembly, Mei Wei, Priyanka Sivadas, Heather A. Owen, David R. Mitchell, Pinfen Yang

Biological Sciences Faculty Research and Publications

Axonemal complexes in flagella are largely prepackaged in the cell body. As such, one mutation often results in the absence of the co-assembled components and permanent motility deficiencies. For example, a Chlamydomonas mutant defective in RSP4 in the radial spoke (RS), which is critical for bend propagation, has paralyzed flagella that also lack the paralogue RSP6 and three additional RS proteins. Intriguingly, recent studies showed that several mutant strains contain a mixed population of swimmers and paralyzed cells despite their identical genetic background. Here we report a cause underlying these variations. Two new mutants lacking RSP6 swim processively and other …