#centrioles

Centriole Building

The centriole – an organelle vital for the faithful separation into each daughter cell when a cell divides – is composed of an assembly of proteins. Using expansion microscopy, this study correlates the spatial location of 24 of those proteins with structural features of the human centriole, and then models the molecular architecture of the centriole as it assembles (shown here)

Read the published research article here

Video from work by Marine H. Laporte and colleagues

University of Geneva, Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Faculty of Sciences, Geneva, Switzerland

Video originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Published in Cell, April 2024

Centriole Formation

Protein called SAS-6 role in the maintenance of the architecture of centrioles – specialised structures involved in organising cell contents during division – as they form early in embryonic development in cells that generate mouse embryonic stem cells

Read the published article here

Image from work by Marta Grzonka and Hisham Bazzi

Department of Cell Biology of the Skin and Department of Dermatology and Venereology, Medical Faculty, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in eLife, February 2024

Ring Worm

The nematode worm, C.elegans (Caenorhabditis elegans) shares many of our genes, so makes an excellent model for studying parts of us that evolution has kept or ‘conserved’. But there are limits to studying small, crucial elements like these centrioles – structures in the cytoplasm used like north and south poles to help cells orientate themselves. Here researchers use a combination of expansion microscopy, to swell the structures up, and STED microscopy to picture them in high-resolution. They pick apart the tiny components in the overall centriole, like a watchmaker poring over cogs and wheels, although 10 million times smaller. The 'raw' images captured on the left are digitally ‘symmetrized’ using software (right) – revealing the symmetry of a centriole’s different rings in different colours. Now researchers can investigate how each part plays a role in anchoring dividing genetic material during mitosis – in healthy and cancerous cells.

Written by John Ankers

Image from work by Alexander Woglar and colleagues

Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC), School of Life Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in PLOS Biology, September 2022

Safe Construction

It might not feel like it, but right now millions of your cells are frantically multiplying. As your body grows, repairs damage, and naturally refreshes material, cells duplicate their contents then split into two identical versions. Precisely copying DNA – the molecular code of life wound into tiny chromosomes in each cell – is crucial to this process. This is in part governed by centrioles – structures that help produce guiding fibres. Certain details of how centrioles form and function are still unknown, and a new study has found that one particular enzyme, PLK4, helps assemble centrioles by interacting with a protein called STIL. If this interaction is disturbed, too many centrioles (green in these two overloaded replicating fly cells, with DNA in blue), or too few, were produced by cells. Malfunctioning centrioles can lead to brain disorders and cancer. The better we understand their construction, the sooner we’ll be able to develop new treatments.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Image from work by Tyler C. Moyer and Andrew J.Holland

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

Image originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)

Published in eLife, May 2019