IRMACS: The Interdisciplinary Colloquium: "Chasing the tail of a cellular curiosity"

Abstract

In 1676, the Royal Society questioned the credibility of Antonie van Leeuwenhoek when he reported single-celled organisms swimming about in a drop of pond water. Among these unthinkable creatures were flagellated green algal cells much like my research organism, Chlamydomonas. In this seminar I will tell the serendipitous story of how chasing a curious flagellar behaviour lead to surprising discoveries about polycystic kidney disease and eukaryotic cell division.