Centro de Química Estrutural, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal; Escola Superior de Tecnologia da Saúde de Lisboa, Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal.
Department of Biological and Medical Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK.
Eur J Protistol. 2020 Oct;76:125722. doi: 10.1016/j.ejop.2020.125722. Epub 2020 Jun 10.
Cilia and flagella play an important role in motility, sensory perception, and the life cycles of eukaryotes, from protists to humans. However, much critical information concerning cilia structure and function remains elusive. The vast majority of ciliary and flagellar proteins analyzed so far are evolutionarily conserved and play a similar role in protozoa and vertebrates. This makes protozoa attractive biological models for studying cilia biology. Research conducted on ciliated or flagellated protists may improve our general understanding of cilia protein composition, of cilia beating, and can shed light on the molecular basis of the human disorders caused by motile cilia dysfunction. The Symposium "From genomics to flagellar and ciliary structures and cytoskeleton dynamics" at ECOP2019 in Rome presented the latest discoveries about cilia biogenesis and the molecular mechanisms of ciliary and flagellum motility based on studies in Paramecium, Tetrahymena, and Trypanosoma. Here, we review the most relevant aspects presented and discussed during the symposium and add our perspectives for future research.
纤毛和鞭毛在运动、感觉感知以及从原生动物到人类的真核生物生命周期中发挥着重要作用。然而，关于纤毛结构和功能的许多关键信息仍然难以捉摸。迄今为止，分析的绝大多数纤毛和鞭毛蛋白在进化上是保守的，在原生动物和脊椎动物中发挥着相似的作用。这使得原生动物成为研究纤毛生物学的有吸引力的生物模型。对有纤毛或鞭毛的原生动物进行的研究可以提高我们对纤毛蛋白组成、纤毛跳动的一般认识，并揭示由运动纤毛功能障碍引起的人类疾病的分子基础。在罗马举行的 ECOP2019 年“从基因组到鞭毛和纤毛结构和细胞骨架动力学”研讨会上，介绍了基于 Paramecium、Tetrahymena 和 Trypanosoma 研究的纤毛发生和纤毛和鞭毛运动的分子机制的最新发现。在这里，我们回顾了研讨会期间提出和讨论的最相关方面，并为未来的研究增加了我们的观点。
