In a review article published in the December 1 BioScience, George B. Witman, a cellular biologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, highlighted the growing body of evidence that abnormal or absent cilia can cause a wide range of human disorders, dubbed “ciliopathies.”
“Kidney disease and blindness, multiple digits, shortened bones or extremities, obesity—all of these things, it turns out, are due to defects in cilia,” he says. Experts add that the discovery of a common thread between these disparate disorders may eventually help researchers develop gene-based therapies to combat those conditions.
At first blush, cilia seem relatively innocuous. As they beat back and forth outside the cell, coordinated brushes of so-called motile cilia regulate fluid flow nearby. But almost all human cells also have one primary, or nonmotile, cilium that functions more like a molecular antenna. The primary cilium is an internally dynamic structure, packed with proteins that detect and convey important messages to its cell about the local environment. “The signaling machinery is concentrated in the cilia,” Witman says. “All in this very tightly controlled, constrained space.”
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