• DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.198102
• Corpus ID: 232428279

Fluid mechanics of mosaic ciliated tissues

@article{Boselli2021FluidMO,
  title={Fluid mechanics of mosaic ciliated tissues},
  author={Francesco Boselli and Jerome Jullien and Eric Lauga and Raymond E. Goldstein},
  journal={bioRxiv},
  year={2021}
}

• F. Boselli, J. Jullien, +1 author R. Goldstein
• Published 31 March 2021
• Biology
• bioRxiv

In tissues as diverse as amphibian skin and the human airway, the cilia that propel fluid are grouped in sparsely distributed multiciliated cells (MCCs). We investigate fluid transport in this “mosaic” architecture, with emphasis on the trade-offs that may have been responsible for its evolutionary selection. Live imaging of MCCs in embryos of the frog Xenopus laevis shows that cilia bundles behave as active vortices that produce a flow field accurately represented by a local force applied to the fluid. A coarse-grained model that self-consistently couples bundles to the ambient flow reveals that hydrodynamic interactions between MCCs limit their rate of work so that when the system size is large compared to a single MCC, they best shear the tissue at low area coverage, a result that mirrors findings for other sparse distributions such as cell receptors and leaf stomata.