Loss of a conserved MAPK causes catastrophic failure in assembly of a specialized cilium-like structure in <i>Toxoplasma gondii</i>
William O’Shaughnessy, Xiaoyu Hu, Tsebaot Beraki, Matthew B. McDougal, Michael L. Reese
Abstract
orthologue of the conserved kinase ERK7 as essential to conoid assembly. Parasites in which ERK7 has been depleted lose their conoids late during maturation and are immotile and thus unable to invade new host cells. This is the most severe phenotype to conoid biogenesis yet reported, and is made more striking by the fact that ERK7 is not a conoid protein, as it localizes just basal to the structure. ERK7 has been recently implicated in ciliogenesis in metazoan cells, and our data suggest that this kinase has an ancient and central role in regulating ciliogenesis throughout Eukaryota.
Topics & Concepts
BiologyConoidCiliumToxoplasma gondiiCell biologyBiogenesisUltrastructureGeneticsAnatomyGeneAntibodyToxoplasma gondii Research StudiesHeme Oxygenase-1 and Carbon MonoxideCytomegalovirus and herpesvirus research