Abstract
Bending shapes of live and demembranated sea-urchin sperm flagella have been studied at high resolution by means of digital image analysis. The curvature of a flagellum tended to change abruptly from one value to another along the flagellum, whereas it remained rather constant within a segment of variable length. The length of the segment, in which the curvature is kept constant, varied in a beat cycle. The transition points between these segments of constant curvature were not fixed at particular distances from the flagellar base. These dynamic aspects of discrete bend steps may reflect discreteness of active bend generation in flagella.
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© 1990 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Baba, S.A., Mogami, Y., Nonaka, K. (1990). Discrete Nature of Flagellar Bending Detected by Digital Image Analysis. In: Alt, W., Hoffmann, G. (eds) Biological Motion. Lecture Notes in Biomathematics, vol 89. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-51664-1_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-51664-1_10
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