De-Castro Ana R G, Quintas-Gonçalves Joana, Silva-Ribeiro Tiago, Rodrigues Diogo R M, De-Castro Maria J G, Abreu Carla M, Dantas Tiago J
i3S - Instituto de Investigação e Inovação em Saúde, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal.
IBMC - Instituto de Biologia Molecular e Celular, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal.
MicroPubl Biol. 2021 May 11;2021. doi: 10.17912/micropub.biology.000396.
Cilia are microtubule-based organelles that carry out a wide range of critical functions throughout the development of higher animals. Regardless of their type, all cilia rely on a motor-driven, bidirectional transport system known as intraflagellar transport (IFT). Of the many components of the IFT machinery, IFT20 is one of the smallest subunits. Nevertheless, IFT20 has been shown to play critical roles in the assembly of several types of mammalian cilia. Here we show that the IFT20 homolog in , IFT-20, is also important for correct cilium assembly in sensory neurons. Strikingly, however, we find that IFT-20-deficient animals are able to assemble short, vestigial cilia. In spite of this, we show that practically all IFT-20-deficient animals fail to respond to environmental cues that are normally detected by cilia to modulate their behavior. Altogether, our results indicate that IFT-20 is critical for both the correct assembly and function of cilia in .
纤毛是以微管为基础的细胞器，在高等动物的整个发育过程中执行广泛的关键功能。无论其类型如何，所有纤毛都依赖一种称为鞭毛内运输（IFT）的由马达驱动的双向运输系统。在IFT机制的众多组成部分中，IFT20是最小的亚基之一。然而，IFT20已被证明在几种类型的哺乳动物纤毛组装中起关键作用。在这里，我们表明秀丽隐杆线虫中的IFT20同源物IFT-20对于感觉神经元中正确的纤毛组装也很重要。然而，令人惊讶的是，我们发现缺乏IFT-20的动物能够组装短的、退化的纤毛。尽管如此，我们表明几乎所有缺乏IFT-20的动物都无法对通常由纤毛检测到的环境线索做出反应以调节其行为。总之，我们的结果表明IFT-20对于秀丽隐杆线虫中纤毛的正确组装和功能都至关重要。
