The following is a brief summary of this work. A major unsolved question in cell biology is how do cells control the size of their organelles. Flagella are excellent model systems to ask this question because their length is easily measured. Moreover, if flagella are removed, the cell responds by turning on a regeneration pathway, which involves the upregulation of a large number of flagellar genes. To learn about our work on the flagellar regeneration pathway, click here .
Motor proteins play important roles in assembling cellular structures.
In order to begin to understand the role of kinesins in organelle assembly, we have cloned a number of flagellar kinesins from Chlamydomonas. Some of these have very striking localization patterns. To learn more, click here . Tubulin undergoes extensive post-translational modification. Among other modifications, tubulin can become acetylated, as first discovered in our lab.