Chapter 2 - Basal Bodies and Associated Structures

Abstract

Basal bodies and flagella are ancient organelles that show amazing evolutionary conservation as evidenced by our identification of the flagellar basal body proteome and the proteome analyses of flagella and basal bodies. Many features of Chlamydomonas basal bodies reflect the organization of these structures in most organisms. Fibers attached to the basal bodies cover rootlet microtubules (composed of four bundles of microtubules that originate from the basal body region and extend under the plasma membrane), distal striated fibers and nucleus-basal body connectors, proximal fibers, and Y-shaped connectors. Intact basal bodies have been isolated by a variety of methods. These preparations differ in the presence of flagella, rootlet microtubules, and nuclei. This is focused in global approaches to the identification of basal body proteins part. Comparative genomic techniques represent an alternative approach to identify basal body proteins. Mutants with altered basal bodies or transition zones have been reported with the inclusions of bld2-1 allele, uni3-1 allele, bld10-1 strain, like bld2-1 and sas-6 gene. Studies in Chlamydomonas will provide the framework for dissecting docking and transport of flagellar proteins in a simple, genetically tractable, cell-autonomous system. In turn, processes in Chlamydomonas can be applied to studies of ciliary diseases and signaling events mediated by sensory cilia in diverse metazoan cell types.