Some thoughts about intraflagellar transport in reproduction.

Cilia/flagella are cell organelles that protrude from the surface of many eukaryotic cells and perform various functions. They are assembled and maintained by a conserved mechanism called intraflagellar transport (IFT), a bi-directional transportation process originally discovered in . Twenty-two core IFT components have been identified so far, and these complexes, together with the BBSome components, further form IFT particles that lie in close proximity to the basal body. They move from the base to the tip of the flagellum, and then back to the base. Like cilia defects, disruption of IFT/BBSome also gives rise to various genetic and developmental disorders, also called ciliapathies. Global disruption of IFT components causes embryonic lethality, which makes it impossible to study the role of IFT in reproduction. We summarize recent findings and the strategy to study the role of IFT in reproduction using mouse models. Finally, we show some examples of human IFT mutations and discuss the potential roles of IFT components in non-ciliated cells.