Within the biological and medical disciplines, recent discoveries have noted that primary cilia in many types of cells within eukaryotes serve as cellular antennae. These cilia play important roles in chemosensation, mechanosensation, and thermosensation. The current scientific understanding of primary cilia organelles views them as "sensory cellular antennae that coordinate a large number of cellular signaling pathways, sometimes coupling the signaling to ciliary motility or alternatively to cell division and differentiation."
"Almost every vertebrate cell has a specialized cell surface projection called a primary cilium. …primary cilia are key participants in intercellular signaling. This new appreciation of primary cilia as cellular antennae that sense a wide variety of signals could help explain why ciliary defects underlie such a wide range of human disorders, including retinal degeneration, polycystic kidney disease, Bardet-Biedl syndrome, and neural tube defects."
Read more about this topic: Antenna (biology)
Famous quotes containing the word antennae:
“There is no magic decoding ring that will help us read our young adolescent’s feelings. Rather, what we need to do is hold out our antennae in the hope that we’ll pick up the right signals.”
—The Lions Clubs International and the Quest Nation. The Surprising Years, III, ch.4 (1985)