Building centrioles

Centrioles and surrounding centrosomal material nucleate both mitotic spindles and interphase microtubule asters, but centrioles are not an easy structure to dissect with either biochemistry or genetics. There are budding yeast mutants that arrest at various stages of maturation of the spindle pole body (SPB), but the SPB and mammalian centriole bear no physical resemblance to each other despite sharing some proteins and fulfilling the same function.

Matsuura et al. (page 663) therefore resort to a trick of Chlamydomonas biology. In this unicellular green algae, the basal body has its normal function of nucleating flagellar microtubules during interphase, but it also switches to act as a centriole during cell division. This dual role gives the authors an easily identifiable phenotype for the isolation of mutants defective in centriole function.

Using...