Wemmer Kimberly A, Marshall Wallace F
Department of Biochemistry, University of California, San Francisco, California 94158, USA.
Int Rev Cytol. 2007;260:175-212. doi: 10.1016/S0074-7696(06)60004-1.
A fundamental unsolved question in cell biology is how the cell controls the size of its organelles. Cilia and flagella are an ideal test case to study the mechanism of organelle size control, because their size is easily measured and can be represented by a single number-length. Moreover, the involvement of cilia in many developmental and physiological processes suggests an understanding of their size control system is critical for understanding ciliary diseases, many of which (e.g., autosomal recessive polycystic kidney disease) are known to involve abnormally short cilia. The flagella of the model organism Chlamydomonas reinhardtii provide the best genetic and cell-biological system to study length control of cilia. Studies in this organism using genetics, biochemistry, imaging, and mathematical modeling have revealed many genes involved in length control of cilia and flagella, and have suggested several testable models for length regulation.
细胞生物学中一个基本的未解决问题是细胞如何控制其细胞器的大小。纤毛和鞭毛是研究细胞器大小控制机制的理想测试案例，因为它们的大小易于测量，并且可以用一个单一的数值——长度来表示。此外，纤毛参与许多发育和生理过程，这表明了解它们的大小控制系统对于理解纤毛疾病至关重要，其中许多疾病（例如常染色体隐性多囊肾病）已知涉及异常短小的纤毛。模式生物莱茵衣藻的鞭毛为研究纤毛长度控制提供了最佳的遗传和细胞生物学系统。利用遗传学、生物化学、成像和数学建模对这种生物进行的研究已经揭示了许多参与纤毛和鞭毛长度控制的基因，并提出了几个可测试的长度调节模型。
