Tooba's paper is accepted to eLife!! 'A WDR35-dependent coat protein complex transports ciliary membrane cargo vesicles to cilia'

We are thrilled to announce that Tooba’s first author paper from her PhD is accepted and out ahead of publication at eLife. https://elifesciences.org/articles/69786

A huge congratulations to all involved in this collaborative effort to understand how our cells efficiently move key cargos between cellular compartments, known as organelles. Many times these cargos are produced by the cell at a huge distance from where they are needed to function, which is certainly the case for cilia. Found on the surface of most of our cells, cilia play key roles in responding to outside signals essential for our development and health because they are highly enriched in these cargos. In this work, we find a protein complex called IFT (intraflagellar transport) and specifically of the IFT-A variety well known to play key roles in moving cargoes back from the tip of cilia, also plays essential roles in delivering cargos to the base and allowing entry into cilia. Without this IFT-A complex, as seen in cells from patients or mouse models of ciliopathies, vesicles with cargo pile up around cilia but cannot enter to allow cilia to grown and function properly. Here, we visualize precisely where these proteins are acting in the cell and how traffic to developing cilia goes very wrong without this complex. We demonstrate that peripheral IFT-A components can directly bind to specific lipids in vitro and in vivo (ok in cells) show electron-dense vesicles which can fuse at the ciliary base contain IFT-A.

Great collaborations with the Marsh (HGU), Lorentzen (Aarhus) and Pigino (MPI CBG, Human Technopole) labs really strengthened this multidisciplinary project spearheaded by former graduate ESRIC student extraordinaire Tooba Quidwai! Fantastic interactions with editors and reviewers at eLife- our paper is much better with their suggestions, as well as feedback and comments on the pre-print interations posted on bioRXIV. More to follow!