Flagella are projectile organelles that tell us about the organism’s mechanisms for mobility and sensory structures. Flagella are highly conserved structures among eukaryotes and are found in many microorganisms and cells of multicellular organism including ovaries, sperm, and kidney. Flagella is composed of highly conserved structures including axonemes and dynein regulatory complex. Axonemes are the machinery responsible for the function of the microtubules. The dynein regulatory complex, also known as nexin, is an adaptor for the binding of specific inner-arm dynein isoforms and resists microtubule sliding. [YT1] In this study genes encoding for dynein regulatory complex and axonemes are investigated in 20 organisms including 14 non-flagellates. Significant findings support the presence of axoneme and dynein regulatory complex genes, in non-flagellates as well as the evidence that some functional genes may be specific to flagellate only organisms. It is concluded that the flagellum is indeed a highly conserved structure that in some species has been lost due to the inactivation and/ or loss of functional genes over the course of a species' evolution.
