ArticleNature physics2020
Multi-scale spatial heterogeneity enhances particle clearance in airway ciliary arrays.
Article in Nature physics, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 38 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
38 citing papers in PubMed, 98 citations in OpenAlex.
- Successful oocyte transport through the oviduct does not depend on the longitudinal alignment of oviduct epithelial folds.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
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- Robust Smart Superhydrophobic Cilia.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Modeling tissue-scale ciliary transport and mixing in three-dimensional Newtonian flow.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Dynamics and emergence of metachronal waves in the ciliary band of a metazoan larva.Science advances · 2025Article
- Advection versus diffusion in brain ventricular transport.Fluids and barriers of the CNS · 2025Article
- The Morphological, Behavioral, and Transcriptomic Life Cycle of Anthrobots.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- Cilia dynamics create a dynamic barrier to penetration of the periciliary layer in human airway epithelia.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Synthetic Forms Most Beautiful: Engineering Insights into Self-Organization.Physiology (Bethesda, Md.) · 2025Review
- Structure and function relationships of mucociliary clearance in human and rat airways.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Armored Regenerable Cilia.ACS nano · 2025Article
- Structure and Function Relationships of Mucociliary Clearance in Human and Rat Airways.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Multiorifice acoustic microrobot for boundary-free multimodal 3D swimming.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Flow Physics Guides Morphology of Ciliated Organs.Nature physics · 2024Article
- Fallopian tube rheology regulates epithelial cell differentiation and function to enhance cilia formation and coordination.Nature communications · 2024Article
- STRUCTURE-FUNCTION RELATIONSHIPS OF MUCOCILIARY CLEARANCE IN HUMAN AIRWAYS.Research square · 2024Article
- Specialized proresolving mediator resolvin E1 corrects the altered cystic fibrosis nasal epithelium cilia beating dynamics.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Perspectives on Principles of Cellular Behavior from the Biophysics of Protists.Integrative and comparative biology · 2023Review
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Mucus clearance constitutes the primary defence of the respiratory system against viruses, bacteria and environmental insults [1]. This transport across the entire airway emerges from the integrated activity of thousands of multiciliated cells, each containing hundreds of cilia, which together must coordinate their spatial arrangement, alignment and motility [2, 3]. The mechanisms of fluid transport have been studied extensively at the level of an individual cilium [4, 5], collectively moving metachronal waves [6-10], and more generally the hydrodynamics of active matter [11, 12]. However, the connection between local cilia architecture and the topology of the flows they generate remains largely unexplored. Here, we image the mouse airway from the sub-cellular (nm) to the organ scales (mm), characterising quantitatively its ciliary arrangement and the generated flows. Locally we measure heterogeneity in both cilia organisation and flow structure, but across the trachea fluid transport is coherent. To examine this result, a hydrodynamic model was developed for a systematic exploration of different tissue architectures. Surprisingly, we find that disorder enhances particle clearance, whether it originates from fluctuations, heterogeneity in multiciliated cell arrangement or ciliary misalignment. This resembles elements of 'stochastic resonance' [13-15], in the sense that noise can improve the function of the system. Taken together, our results shed light on how the microstructure of an active carpet [16, 17] determines its emergent dynamics. Furthermore, this work is also directly applicable to human airway pathologies [1], which are the third leading cause of deaths worldwide [18].
Identifiers
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.