Structural insights into the architecture and assembly of eukaryotic flagella

Authors:

Narcis-Adrian Petriman1 and Esben Lorentzen1

doi: 10.15698/mic2020.11.734
Volume 7, pp. 289 to 299, published 21/09/2020.

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Affiliations:

1 Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Aarhus University, Gustav Wieds Vej 10c, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark.

Keywords: 

cilia, intraflagellar transport (IFT), microtubule doublets, BBSome

Corresponding Author(s):

Esben Lorentzen, Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Aarhus University, Gustav Wieds Vej 10c, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark; el@mbg.au.dk

Conflict of interest statement:

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Please cite this article as:

Narcis-Adrian Petriman and Esben Lorentzen (2020). Structural insights into the architecture and assembly of eukaryot-ic flagella. Microbial Cell 7(11): 289-299. doi: 10.15698/mic2020.11.734

© 2020 Petriman and Lorentzen. This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which al-lows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.

Abstract:

Cilia and flagella are slender projections found on most eukaryotic cells including unicellular organisms such as Chlamydomonas, Trypanosoma and Tetrahymena, where they serve motility and signaling functions. The cilium is a large molecular machine consisting of hundreds of different proteins that are trafficked into the organelle to organize a repetitive microtubule-based axoneme. Several recent studies took advantage of improved cryo-EM methodology to unravel the high-resolution structures of ciliary complexes. These include the recently reported purification and structure determination of axonemal doublet microtubules from the green algae Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, which allows for the modeling of more than 30 associated protein factors to provide deep molecular insight into the architecture and repetitive nature of doublet microtubules. In addition, we will review several recent contributions that dissect the structure and function of ciliary trafficking complexes that ferry structural and signaling components between the cell body and the cilium organelle.