More than just the postal service: novel roles for IFT proteins in signal transduction.
Disruption of intraflagellar transport (IFT) results in loss of flagella and cilia as well as their signaling activity, making it difficult to assess possible roles of IFT in signal transduction. In a recent issue of Cell, Wang et al. (2006) used a temperature-sensitive IFT mutant to separate flagella assembly from signaling activity, and they show that IFT has a direct role in forming signaling complexes in the flagella.
Yoder
Bradley K
BK
University of Alabama at Birmingham, McCallum Building, Room 652, 1918 University Boulevard, Birmingham Alabama 35294, USA.