![]() Kanso and McFall-Ngai with lead authors Janna Nawroth, a principal investigator at Emulate Inc, and Hanliang Guo, a PhD student in Kanso's lab at USC, put the squid under a microscope and then exposed it to water containing Vibrio Fischeri bacteria. The scholars sought to know: why does this bacterium gain access and why do all bacteria fail to accumulate within the squid's light organ? In addition, they sought to explain what, if any, is the role of cilia in allowing access? ![]() The researchers examined how these squids in their nascent stage allow symbiotic bacteria Vibrio Fischeri to enter into their ciliated light organs, which play a crucial role in camouflaging the ink sacks of the otherwise translucent organism while they hunt for food at night. To learn about how cilia might work in the human body, Kanso, in collaboration with symbiosis expert McFall-Ngai and biofluid expert Janna Nawroth studied bobtail squid. Their findings could also provide insights on how cilia dysfunction within organs affect for example, pulmonary conditions or infertility (how cilia help sperm reach eggs). The results are contrary to previous research which assumes that cilia solely play a "clearance function." They could shed light on the role cilia - which are the size of one hundredth of a single human hair - play in human respiratory system and even in the reproductive systems and the brain. The paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, describes a framework for the role of fluid mechanics in letting symbiotic bacteria in an organism and enhancing chemical communication between the symbiont and the host organism.
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