Brandeis Magazine

In associate professor Daniela Nicastro’s biology lab, single-celled green algae known as Chlamydomonas get shaken up in a culturing box to improve their growth rates. The Nicastro lab studies cilia and flagella, the whip-like tails that propel cells through their watery world. Studying flagellates can show how mucus is cleared from the human trachea, for instance, or how mutations result in ciliary diseases.