Tailing Tuba

Cilia are finger-like protrusions on cells that work as sensors to help monitor and regulate the molecules that flow in and out of our cells. Within kidney cells, defective cilia can cause kidney disease. In a zebrafish model of kidney disease, researchers disrupted a protein called Tuba – which plays an important role in the molecular process of cilia function – and saw that this led to abnormal kidney development. Because cilia are present in a number of different organs, researchers also found that disrupting Tuba caused the build-up of fluid in the brain, swelling in the eyes, fluid build-up in the abdomen and a curly tail (pictured in bottom two rows compared with normal zebrafish in top two rows). Further understanding into how cilia become dysfunctional in these different organs will allow better insights into treating a wide range of conditions.

Written by Katie Panteli

Katie Panteli

Writer

Katie, a Warwick Biomed graduate, works for a science-publishing house in London with some of the world's most respected scientific minds. She's most interested in human biology, anything and everything that makes us tick.

• Image from work by Jeong-In Baek and colleagues
• Department of Medicine, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA
• Non-commercial image reuse permitted by the Journal of Biological Chemistry
• Published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, February 2016