Seeing through the cilium

To understand vision in vertebrates, one might look to worms and algae, according to recent results. On page 103, Pazour et al. show that a conserved protein transport mechanism in the flagellae of algae and worms is also necessary for development and maintenance of mammalian photoreceptors.

Assembly and maintenance of motor and sensory cilia in worms and algae requires the transport of proteins via intraflagellar transport (IFT). The outer segment (OS) of a vertebrate photoreceptor, itself a modified cilium, is formed by transporting membrane and opsin through a connecting cilium that provides a link between the photoreceptor inner (metabolic) and outer (photoreceptive) segments. Photopigment molecules and phototransduction proteins must pass through this connecting cilium to replace components of the OS that have been degraded.

Now, it appears that the mechanism used to transport these photoreceptor...