Abstract
Paramecium tetraurelia is a ciliate that has long been used for a variety of different scientific studies, but has yet to be established as a model organism for studying ciliary structure and function. P. tetraurelia cells are covered with thousands of cilia, which are hair-like projections that are important for sensing the environment and for cell motility, e.g. to propel the cell itself or food into the cell’s mouth. It has also been shown that gene knockdown in P. tetraurelia can be induced by RNA interference via bacterial feeding. By using feeding RNA interference, we targeted pf16, a gene whose mutant phenotype is characterized by ciliary paralysis in the green algae Chlamydomonas. Our study aims at accomplishing two tasks: to establish P. tetraurelia as genetic model organism to systematically manipulate and study ciliary structure and function, and to localize the protein Pf16 in the central pair complex of cilia. We found that while P. tetraurelia is a promising candidate for genetic studies using RNA interference, some technical aspects have to be further optimized in future studies before this approach can become a general tool for studying ciliary structure and function.