Centriole triplet microtubules are required for stable centriole formation and inheritance in human cells
- Stanford University, United States
- National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, United States
- Stanford School of Medicine, United States
Abstract
Centrioles are composed of long-lived microtubules arranged in nine triplets. However, the contribution of triplet microtubules to mammalian centriole formation and stability is unknown. Little is known of the mechanism of triplet microtubule formation, but experiments in unicellular eukaryotes indicate that delta-tubulin and epsilon-tubulin, two less-studied tubulin family members, are required. Here, we report that centrioles in delta-tubulin and epsilon-tubulin null mutant human cells lack triplet microtubules and fail to undergo centriole maturation. These aberrant centrioles are formed de novo each cell cycle, but are unstable and do not persist to the next cell cycle, leading to a futile cycle of centriole formation and disintegration. Disintegration can be suppressed by paclitaxel treatment. Delta-tubulin and epsilon-tubulin physically interact, indicating that these tubulins act together to maintain triplet microtubules and that these are necessary for inheritance of centrioles from one cell cycle to the next
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Author details
Funding
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (5 F32 GM117678)
- Jennifer T Wang
National Cancer Institute (Intramural Program)
- Dong Kong
- Jadranka Loncarek
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R01GM052022)
- Tim Stearns
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.
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Centriole triplet microtubules are required for stable centriole formation and inheritance in human cells
eLife 6:e29061.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.29061
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