Effects of depleting CEP41 in Paramecia

Paramecium tetraurelia are model microorganisms that can live in pond water, using cilia in gathering their food and nutrients, in addition to movement. These cilia covered eukaryotes are powerful experimental organisms due to their fast doubling times, high number of offspring, annotated genome, and commonly used for RNA interference studies. Within the Paramecium tetraurelia, we specifically looked at the CEP41 gene. This specific gene plays an important role in intracellular transport of tubulin and the function of cilia in other organisms. Paramecium tetraurelia rely on cilia for motility, indicating that if CEP41 was depleted the swimming movements or patterns of paramecia would be altered. In the course of this experiment, we took IPTG and induced the HtII5 cells and fed them to the Paramecium tetraurelia, releasing double stranded RNA. The double stranded RNA induces a silencing of the targeted messenger RNA.. To measure the effects of CEP41 we used semi quantitative RT PCR to examine mRNA levels and used immunostaining to give us a better interpretation of our results. Specifically, if this gene is downregulated we expect to observe the paramecia to have difficulty in movement, directing food particles, and changes in swimming patterns.