Cilia and flagella are motile or non-motile cellular organelles that track their surroundings and/or coordinate cell/organism motility. Even though multiple motile cilia are bundled together on a cell surface, nonmotile cilium elongates from the cell surface as one cilium. Non-motile cilia from separate cells appear to form joint cilia by extending in parallel to each other. The non-motile cilia of C. elegans PHA and PHB sensory neurons, for example, protrude from the end of the dendrite but they extend side by side and intersect in the middle part of the cilia, reaching the same length. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying how adjacent cilia achieve the same length and converge remain a mystery. In the current study, we employ C. elegans to investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying these characteristics. We discovered that several genes, including
arl-13, are needed for the correct convergence of PHA and PHB cilia. We next created a list of genes expressed in either of these two ciliated cells (PHA or PHB cells). For example, the conserved potassium voltage-gated channel gene
egl-36 is expressed in PHB cells and not in PHA cells, and we found that it localizes at the base of the cilia. We generated
egl-36 mutations in combination with other ciliary gene mutants because the disruption function of
egl-36 alone does not cause gross ciliary defects. In these double mutants, we observed short cilia in both PHB and PHA sensory neurons. We are gathering more data for this study right now, and we will present our findings at the conference. Key words: cilia, cilia biogenesis,
arl-13;
egl-36