Tuesday, February 19, 2019

New fly model of motile cilia-related diseases

Zur Lage P, Newton FG, Jarman AP. Survey of the Ciliary Motility Machinery of Drosophila Sperm and Ciliated Mechanosensory Neurons Reveals Unexpected Cell-Type Specific Variations: A Model for Motile Ciliopathies. Front Genet. 2019 Feb 1;10:24. PMID: 30774648; PMCID: PMC6367277.

From the abstract: "... The molecular machinery of ciliary motility comprises a variety of cilium-specific dynein motor complexes along with other complexes that regulate their activity. Assembling the motors requires the function of dedicated "assembly factors" and transport processes. In humans, mutation of any one of at least 40 different genes encoding components of the motility apparatus causes Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia (PCD), a disease of defective ciliary motility. Recently, Drosophila has emerged as a model for motile cilia biology and motile ciliopathies. This is somewhat surprising as most Drosophila cells lack cilia, and motile cilia are confined to just two specialized cell types ... we survey the Drosophila genome for ciliary motility gene homologs, and ... find that the molecules of cilium motility are well conserved in Drosophila. ... Our work lays the foundation for the increasing use of Drosophila as an excellent model for new motile ciliary gene discovery and validation, for understanding motile cilium function and assembly, as well as understanding the nature of genetic defects underlying human motile ciliopathies."

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