Mother puts organelles in their place

Like a strict parent, the mother centriole keeps order in the cell by telling other organelles where to sit, according to new work by Jessica Feldman, Wallace Marshall (University of California, San Francisco, CA), and Stefan Geimer (Universität Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany).

Marshall's team is interested in what controls the intracellular geometry of organelle positioning. To address this topic, they focus on one organelle that is well-known for its specific positioning: the centriole.

The tethered pair of mother and daughter centrioles is the major component of the centrosome complex and also promotes the assembly of cilia. Thus cilia can act as a cell surface indicator of centriole positioning. The team used the unicellular alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, which normally has two cilia at its apex, to scan for mutants in which cilia were misplaced.

In certain misplaced...