Jeremy Reiter

Neat! I’m excited to read this!

Hey Bryan! Lots of good reviews about cilia/outer segments in the retina. Wheway et al 2013 and Chen et al 2021 are both a bit disease focused but are great! As for neurons, the recent Jurisch-Yaksi et al 2024 is a nice overview. Anything you’re interested in, in particular?

a woman in a long black dress is walking down a foggy street . ALT: a woman in a long black dress is walking down a foggy street .

The once-in-a-lifetime comedic queen Catherine O'Hara had situs inversus

#cilia #ciliopathy

www.usatoday.com/story/entert...

A protein complex in the extreme distal tip of vertebrate motile cilia controls their organization, length, and function - Nature Communications Here they combine in vivo imaging with proteomics to characterize a protein complex comprised of Ccdc78 and Ccdc33 that acts at the extreme distal tip of 9 + 2 motile cilia to control tip architecture...

Cilia alert! Stoked to have the new paper from Juyeon Hong about a new domain at the extreme distal tip of motile cilia! (The EDT, y'all!) It's out now @natcomms.nature.com.
Check it out!
#cilia

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Color photograph of Joan Steitz (Joan Argetsinger Steitz), the distinguished American molecular biologist and biochemist renowned for her groundbreaking discoveries in RNA biology, including the identification of small nuclear ribonucleoproteins (snRNPs) essential to RNA splicing. She is pictured in a close-up portrait within a laboratory or research setting, smiling warmly and directly at the camera with an engaging, approachable expression that conveys enthusiasm and expertise. Steitz has gray hair pulled back, striking blue eyes, and is wearing large, elaborate dangling earrings adorned with purple gemstones and metallic accents. She is dressed in a rich purple blouse. The softly blurred background includes scientific elements such as lab benches, equipment, monitors, charts, and partial signage, evoking the environment of her long career at Yale University where she served as Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry. #JoanSteitz #MolecularBiology #WomenInScience #Biochemistry #RNA

Biochemist/molecular biologist Joan Steitz was born #OTD in 1941.

She (& team) figured out how our cells read/use genetic instructions to make proteins. A key person who helped crack the code on RNA—the molecule that acts like a messenger between DNA & and the proteins our bodies need. #WomenInSTEM

Vibrant color portrait of Jane S. Richardson, the visionary biophysicist and artist who revolutionized structural biology with her invention of ribbon diagrams. She gazes warmly at the camera with a bright, knowing smile that radiates quiet brilliance and decades of curiosity. Her silver-blonde hair woven with gentle waves. Large, elegant dangling earrings catch the light, and she wears a richly patterned brown blouse embroidered with intricate turquoise paisley motifs and delicate beadwork that echoes the molecular elegance she has spent her life depicting. Behind her floats a luminous, dreamlike backdrop of glowing molecular structures--interlocking hexagonal and ribbon-like forms in electric blues, teals, and greens--blending science and art in a single, living canvas.

Hand-drawn and hand-colored (by Jane Richardson) scientific artwork known as a Richardson ribbon diagram (or “ribbon model”), one of the iconic visual inventions of Jane Richardson that transformed the way we see and understand protein structures. A graceful, three-dimensional tangle of protein backbone ribbons twists and spirals through space, rendered in soft pencil lines and luminous watercolor hues. Smooth golden-brown coils represent α-helices that curl like elegant ribbons, while broad teal-green arrows trace the flat, pleated strands of β-sheets slicing through the molecule with directional purpose. Thin, looping golden threads connect the secondary structures, creating a delicate, almost dance-like choreography of biology’s hidden architecture. The entire form is framed by a simple olive-green mat and dark border, giving the drawing the quiet dignity of both fine art and precise scientific illustration—a timeless bridge between molecular reality and human imagination.

Jane Richardson was born #OTD in 1941

+ Developed the Richardson (ribbon) diagram to represent proteins' 3D structure (becoming a standard representation for protein structures)
+ MacArthur Fellow, 1985
+ Elected, Nat'l Academy of Sciences, 1991
+ President, Biophysical Society, 2012

#WomenInSTEM

AK7 deletion causes an impairment of fluid flow and ciliary function. (A) Representative images of MCCs stained with anti-AK7 (magenta, white) and anti-acetylated tubulin (cyan) antibodies together with phalloidin (green) showing strong ciliary staining in controls (Cas9 alone or gRNA alone) that is missing in AK7 KO cells (Cas9 + gRNAs). Scale is 5 μm.

#DBfeature

Centriolar defects underlie a primary ciliary dyskinesia phenotype in an adenylate kinase 7 deficient ciliated epithelium

By Jennifer Sheridan, Aline Grata, Julia Dorr, Eve E. Suva, Enzo Bresteau, Linus R. Mitchell, Osama Hassan, Brian Mitchell

tinyurl.com/c88cax5z

Amazing to hold @lottepedersen.bsky.social & my @jcellsci.bsky.social Special Issue on #Cilia and #Flagella in all its glossy glory & muscle-engaging brain-boosting weight! So much fabulous content from the community! Fab cover @centriolelab.bsky.social 🥰🥰 journals.biologists.com/jcs/pages/ci...

Primary cilia and BBS4 are required for postnatal pituitary development Primary cilia orchestrate several signaling pathways, and their disruption results in pleiotropic disorders called ciliopathies. Bardet-Beidl syndrome…

Excited to have my first senior author publication out in the world! An awesome collab between myself in @reitergroup.bsky.social's lab and the Berbari lab at IU. We found primary cilia are necessary for postnatal pituitary development. 1/n.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Today is a big day.

After many years of work, I’m excited to finally share a paper describing a novel approach to identifying potential breakthroughs in biomedical research, up to twelve years before the breakthrough itself occurs. 1/15

Just over a week to our FIRST event for 2️⃣0️⃣2️⃣6️⃣- 13/01/2026 15:00-17:30 GMT. What better way to fire up those neural circuits than dipping into the latest breaking #Cilia and #Centrosome science 🧪? Free and open to everyone- /1

You may well be right re moc-1/lin-46. I take no credit nor blame for the vagaries of GO analyses.

And, S. cerevisiae genes that are widely conserved but absent in humans also include those involved in transsulfuration for cystathionine gamma-synthase (YML082W, YHR112C, YLL058W)...

I gotta stop obsessing over this cool stuff and get back to the stuff I'm supposed to be doing... 🤪

Again, I'm out of my depth, but maybe correlating with differences between lots of organisms that make cysteine from sulfur and serine, and humans which need methionine to make cysteine?

Great question, Piali. I delved into the nematode-conserved (human-lost) group. Overrepresented are ammonium transport (amt-1, -2, -3, -4), cysteine biosynthesis (cbl-1, cysl-1, -2, -3, -4), chromatin silencing by small RNA (rrf-1, -2, -3, ego-1), GABA receptor clustering (moc-1, lin-46)... HNY!

Done! Please critique, Benoit. And have a great 2026, man!

Sent! Happy new year, Vijay!

I was highlighting the genes encoding enzymes because, given that almost all of these are understudied, it's harder to predict the function of the structural genes (although the pattern of their phylogenetic distribution gives some clues).

Happy new year, Mustafa! No, the genes that may be missing from humans are certainly not just metabolism-related. There are a bunch that are probably structural. For example, A0A8J1JKU6 is a 4xLRR protein present in primates but not us. Or A0A7M7NBT8 is a 13xWD40 protein present in frogs but not us.

Sent, Elphege! Check your DMs. And please provide critiques!

Thanks again, Bruce. Upon a bit of investigation, the analysis did find that CMAH was missing in humans. CMAH appears to be pretty restricted to metazoa (although Ostreococcus may have a homolog). The genes I spotlighted are all conserved more widely than just metazoa.

Fascinating! Thanks for pointing out this interesting work on human pseudogenization of a hydroxylase, Bruce. I’ll have to check if my analysis also identified this gene.

And some of the genes that we lack may be the result, not of loss, but of failure to gain. For example, transposons may have brought in transposases of the DDE superfamily to a bunch of different clades (e.g., zebrafish XP_073766983.1). But we appear to have escaped... at least thus far! /fin

Perhaps if we had held onto that pseudouridine metabolizing enzyme, the Moderna and Pfizer COVID-19 vaccines (which incorporated pseudouridine into the mRNA) might not have been effective (PMCID: PMC2775451)? 7/8

How would our biology be different if we hadn’t lost these genes? Perhaps if we had held on to that chitinase, we would be better at degrading inhaled chitin and preventing fibrotic lung disease (PMCID: PMC5444468)? 6/8

Another is an ammonium transporter, present in Chlamydomonas through cephalochordates, but missing from amniotes (Uniprot: Q5VHU3). Or a possible chitinase, present from Tetrahymena through arthropods (Uniprot: A0A7M7GAX9). 5/8

We may have lost other genes earlier in evolution. One example is a possible pseudouridine metabolizing enzyme, present from Tetrahymena to birds, but lost from mammals (an example of this class of genes is Uniprot: Q1RLT6). 4/8

We may have lost some of these genes relatively recently in evolution. One example is TDH, encoding L-threonine dehydrogenase. Prokaryotes to chimps have TDH. But, in us, it may have degenerated into a pseudogene. CCDC162 is another example: chimps have it, but it’s pseudogenized in us. 3/8

Over the holiday, I tried to do some comparative genomic sleuthing, and made a list of a few hundred gene families that appear to be conserved across diverse eukaryotes but humans don’t have. (Please DM if you’re interested in a list. Really… please.) Warning: wild speculation forthcoming… 2/8

Modern biology research is biased towards investigating genes that are widely conserved and present in humans. What about genes that ARE widely conserved but NOT present in humans? Can genes missing from humans tell us something about what makes our biology different from that of other animals? 1/8