Systems Medicine for Ciliary Genes

Cilia are an antenna like organelle whose inner basic structure consists of a microtubule-based cytoskeleton namely the ciliary axoneme. Cilia extend from most of cell surfaces, where they act as sensor, perform motility function and regulate embryo development.We employ bioinformatic approaches to identify the unknown ciliary genes that build cilia and transition zone. We use C. elegans. as the primary model organism to confirm the expression and localization of candidate ciliary genes in the ciliated sensory neurons (Figure 1, localization of one candidate gene is shown).

Figure 1: Shown are fluorescence images for transgenic worms expressing GFP labelled ciliary candidate gene . GFP tagged ciliary candidate gene is exclusively expressed in the ciliated sensory neurons , where it was found to localize to the cilium.

READ  Ciliopathy