Motile cilia and flagella are essential, highly conserved organelles, and their motility is driven by the coordinated activities of multiple dynein isoforms. The prevailing "switch-point" hypothesis posits that dyneins are asymmetrically activated to drive flagellar bending. To test this model, we applied cryo-electron tomography to visualize activity states of individual dyneins relative to their locations along beating flagella of sea urchin sperm cells. As predicted, bending was generated by the asymmetric distribution of dynein activity on opposite sides of the flagellum. However, contrary to predictions, most dyneins were in their active state, and the smaller population of conformationally inactive dyneins switched flagellar sides relative to the bending direction. Thus, our data suggest a "switch-inhibition" mechanism in which force imbalance is generated by inhibiting, rather than activating, dyneins on alternating sides of the flagellum.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 16. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 15 April 2022.
All research outputs
#2,535,506
of 27,761,023 outputs
Outputs from Science
#31,333
of 84,877 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#47,061
of 344,601 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Science
#738
of 1,224 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 27,761,023 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 90th percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 84,877 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 66.3. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 63% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 344,601 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 86% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 1,224 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 39th percentile – i.e., 39% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
