Lynne Quarmby

..This is the first indication that members of the NIMA family might exert their effects through the regulation of microtubule severing...

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..Work from the unicellular alga Chlamydomonas is providing novel insights as to how cilia and the cell cycle are coordinately regulated...

..Chlamydomonas fla mutants are unable to build and maintain flagella due to defects in IFT...

..We propose that Neks participate in the coordination of ciliogenesis with cell cycle progression. Mammalian Nek1 is a candidate for this activity because renal cysts form in response to dysfunctional ciliary signalling...

..elegans. Finally, new proteins involved in the severing of axonemal microtubules have been discovered in the deflagellation system of Chlamydomonas...

..The elegant waveforms of motile cilia derive from temporal and spatial regulation of dynein-driven microtubule sliding. A new study reveals the surprising localization of the channel responsible for waveform switch...

..This evolutionary perspective, taken together with functional studies of microbial Neks, provides new insights into the cellular roles of the proteins and disease with which some of them have been linked...

..Knockdown of mNek8 by siRNA does not affect ciliary assembly. Taken together with the phenotypes of the mutant mice, these data suggest that mNek1 and mNek8 provide links between cilia, centrosomes, and cell-cycle regulation...

..Previously, we reported that organisms with cilia typically have more Neks than organisms without cilia, but were unable to establish the evolutionary history of the gene family...

..Our data suggest that NEK1 is a candidate to transduce messages from the ciliary-basal body region to the regulation of nuclear gene expression...

..However, release of basal bodies for spindle-associated function is likely to be conserved among the eukaryotes...

..Thus, the discovery that Chlamydomonas expresses a total of at least seven NIMA-related kinases is intriguing. Our analyses suggest that members of this family may play roles in the assembly and function of cilia...

..This is the second NIMA-related kinase shown to affect ciliary function and cell cycle progression in Chlamydomonas. We speculate that members of the NIMA family have evolved nuanced roles to coordinate cilia/cell cycle regulation...

..These data indicate that the ciliary localization of Nek8 in a subset of ureteric-bud-derived kidney tubules is essential for maintaining the integrity of those tubules in the mammalian kidney...

..This review provides a critical examination of diverse data bearing on this problem. It also highlights current deficiencies in our understanding of the mechanism of deciliation...

..Our findings therefore demonstrate functional interactions between a novel family of proteins associated with basal bodies or cilia, providing new insights into the molecular etiology of a pleiotropic human disorder...

..Importantly, we observed that cells in the process of cell cycle-induced flagellar resorption sever the flagella from the basal bodies before resorption is complete, and we find that this process is defective in KAT1 knockdown cells...

..Our findings also suggest that some of the cardinal and secondary symptoms of BBS, such as obesity, diabetes, cardiomyopathy, and learning defects may result from cilia dysfunction...

..A new study of motile cilia from respiratory airways raises the possibility that transducing sensory cues from the environment is a universal characteristic of cilia and may have been the original raison d'être of the ancestral cilium...

..Our genetic and functional data support the assumption that mutations in NEK8 cause nephronophthisis (NPHP9), adding another link between proteins mutated in cystic kidney disease and their localization to cilia and centrosomes...