Structure and function relationships of mucociliary clearance in human and rat airways

• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-57667-z
• Publication Date: 2025-03-11T23:55:46Z
• Authors: Doris Roth; Ayşe Tuğçe Şahin; Feng Ling; Niels Tepho; Christiana N. Senger; Erik J. Quiroz; Ben A. Calvert; Anne M. van der Does; Tankut G. Güney; Sarah Glasl; Annemarie van Sch...; Laura von Schledorn; Ruth Olmer; Eva Kanso; Janna C. Nawroth; Amy L. Ryan
• Keywords: Mucociliary clearance

Mucociliary clearance is a vital defense mechanism of the human airways, protecting against harmful particles and infections. When this process fails, it contributes to respiratory diseases like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) asthma. While advances in single-cell transcriptomics have revealed complexity airway composition, much what we know about how structure impacts relies on animal studies. This limits our ability create accurate human-based models diseases. Here show that airways female rats humans exhibit species-specific differences distribution ciliated secretory cells as well ciliary beat, resulting significantly higher effectiveness humans. We further reveal standard lab-grown cultures lower compared identify underlying structural differences. By combining diverse experiments physics-based modeling, establish universal benchmarks assess function, interpret preclinical models, better understand disease-specific impairments mucociliary clearance. crucial for but its structure-function relationships are not fully understood. Here, authors epithelial by mapping cilia distribution, comparing rat developing quantitative function.