2018 Volume 51 Pages 1-6
The free-living ciliate protist Lacrymaria olor has an extendable neck, which extends up to 8 times longer than its cell body. Previous papers assessed several ultrastructural features of L. olor; however, dynamic features of the extension and contraction cycle of the neck have been unclear. As a first step to understand the mechanism of such dynamic processes, we tried to characterize the neck deformation of living L. olor using a high-speed camera and image processing. These analyses defined the four different cell states, namely, active, resting, activation and inactivation, and highlighted the features of the neck deformation of L. olor depending upon the cell states. Our analyses will make it possible to elucidate further details of the L. olor neck deformation mechanism.
