Skip to main content

Basal Bodies Across Eukaryotes

Guest edited by Monica Bettencourt Dias and Mark Winey.

Basal bodies are the microtubule-based structures that are at the base and nucleate all types of cilia. The nine-fold, radial symmetry of basal bodies is maintained into ciliary axonemes, and basal bodies have specialized structures for their assembly, cortical organization in cells, attachment to membranes and for the formation of cilia. Basal bodies are found in a great variety of eukaryotes, and have been subjected to study in a variety of model organisms, using several techniques. This series of short reviews published in Cilia will introduce the reader to essential elements of basal bodies in a variety of organisms in which they have been studied, illustrating simultaneously the highly conserved nature of this structure and the presence of species specific structures.

This collection of articles has not been sponsored and articles have undergone the journal’s standard peer-review process. The Guest Editors declare no competing interests.

View all collections published in Cilia.

  1. The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, is one of the most extensively studied organisms in biological research and has centrioles/basal bodies and cilia that can be modelled to investigate their functions in ani...

    Authors: Swadhin Chandra Jana, Mónica Bettencourt-Dias, Bénédicte Durand and Timothy L. Megraw
    Citation: Cilia 2016 5:22
  2. Phylum choanoflagellata is the nearest unicellular neighbor of metazoa at the phylogenetic tree. They are single celled or form the colonies, can be presented by naked cells or live in theca or lorica, but in ...

    Authors: Sergey A. Karpov
    Citation: Cilia 2016 5:11
  3. The basal body is a highly organized structure essential for the formation of cilia. Basal bodies dock to a cellular membrane through their distal appendages (also known as transition fibers) and provide the f...

    Authors: Galo Garcia III and Jeremy F. Reiter
    Citation: Cilia 2016 5:17
  4. The amoeboflagellate Naegleria was one of the first organisms in which de novo basal body/centriole assembly was documented. When in its flagellate form, this single-celled protist has two flagella that are templ...

    Authors: Lillian K. Fritz-Laylin and Chandler Fulton
    Citation: Cilia 2016 5:10
  5. In human cells, the basal body (BB) core comprises a ninefold microtubule-triplet cylindrical structure. Distal and subdistal appendages are located at the distal end of BB, where they play indispensable roles...

    Authors: Anastassiia Vertii, Hui-Fang Hung, Heidi Hehnly and Stephen Doxsey
    Citation: Cilia 2016 5:13
  6. Trichonympha is a symbiotic flagellate of many species of termites and of the wood-feeding cockroach. Remarkably, this unicellular organism harbors up to over ten thousand flagella on its...

    Authors: Paul Guichard and Pierre Gönczy
    Citation: Cilia 2016 5:9
  7. Paramecium is a free-living unicellular organism, easy to cultivate, featuring ca. 4000 motile cilia emanating from longitudinal rows of basal bodies anchored in the plasma membrane. The ...

    Authors: Anne-Marie Tassin, Michel Lemullois and Anne Aubusson-Fleury
    Citation: Cilia 2016 5:6
  8. Xenopus has been one of the earliest and most important vertebrate model organisms for investigating the role and structure of basal bodies. Early transmission electron microscopy studies...

    Authors: Siwei Zhang and Brian J. Mitchell
    Citation: Cilia 2016 5:2
  9. Tetrahymena thermophila is a ciliate with hundreds of cilia primarily used for cellular motility. These cells propel themselves by generating hydrodynamic forces through coordinated cilia...

    Authors: Brian A. Bayless, Domenico F. Galati and Chad G. Pearson
    Citation: Cilia 2016 5:1