NIH VideoCasting

NIH Director’s Wednesday Afternoon Lecture

Primary cilia are microtubule-based organelles that arenow known to be present on nearly all differentiated cell types in metazoans.Cilia house signaling molecules that transduce environmental cues and regulatecellular homeostasis and organismal development. Disruption of cilia structureor function is linked with a plethora of diseases termed ciliopathies, many ofwhich are characterized by sensory defects. Despite increased focus on thiscritically important cellular structure, the mechanisms that link ciliogenesisand cilia structure to cilia-based signaling remain to be fully elucidated. Thenematode C. elegans provides an excellent model for the study of ciliogenesisand sensory signaling. Cilia are present only on sensory neurons in C. elegans,and as in other organisms, are essential for the unique functions of theseneuron types. In particular, many sensory neurons in C. elegans exhibitremarkably complex cilia structures, providing an excellent system in which toexplore the conserved pathways that couple the generation of specialized ciliamorphology to unique cellular and signaling functions. In her presentation, Dr.Sengupta will describe recent and ongoing work in the lab on mechanisms thatgenerate and maintain cilia structural diversity in C. elegans, and discuss thecomplex interplay between cilia architecture and sensory neuron function.