Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Centriole biogenesis: a tale of two pathways

Nature Cell Biology volume 9, pages 736–738 (2007)Cite this article

Two recent studies in Drosophila demonstrate that overexpression of proteins required for centriole duplication can not only induce centriole over-duplication in cells containing centrioles, but can also drive de novo centriole assembly in unfertilized eggs that initially lack centrioles. These studies offer a new perspective on the mechanisms that control centriole duplication.

The animal cell's primary microtubule-organizing centre, the centrosome, contains a pair of centrioles surrounded by pericentriolar material (PCM). As the number of centriole pairs determines the number of centrosomes the cell contains, the assembly of new centrioles must be under tight temporal and numerical control. At the time of DNA synthesis, each centriole duplicates to produce a mother and daughter centriole pair, which form two centrosomes to organize the mitotic spindle poles. If more than two centrosomes are present in the cell at the onset of mitosis, the cell often assembles a multipolar mitotic spindle. This inevitably leads to unequal chromosome distribution and consequent aneuploidy and genomic instability, both hallmarks of aggressive tumour cells1. The rules of centriole duplication seem to be quite simple: each mother centriole produces just one daughter, and it does so only once per cell cycle. However, the molecular mechanisms that govern centriole duplication have been an enduring mystery. Two recent reports2,3 shed new light on this subject and raise a number of fascinating questions.

Your institute does not have access to this article

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

Figure 1: Effects of Sak/Plk4 overexpression in different cell types.
Figure 2: Mechanisms of centriole reduplication when Sak/Plk4 or Sas6 are overexpressed.

References

  1. Nigg, E. A. International Journal of Cancer 119, 2717–2723 (2006).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Rodrigues-Martins, A., Riparbelli, M., Callaini, G., Glover, D. M. & Bettencourt-Dias, M. Science 316, 1046–1050 (2007).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Peel, N., Stevens, N. R., Basto, R. & Raff, J. W. Curr. Biol. 17, 834–843 (2007).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Bettencourt-Dias, M. et al. Curr. Biol. 15, 2199–2207 (2005).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Habedank, R., Stierhof, Y. D., Wilkinson, C. J. & Nigg, E. A. Nature Cell Biol. 7, 1140–1146 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Delattre, M., Canard, C. & Gonczy, P. Curr. Biol. 16, 1844–1849 (2006).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Pelletier, L., O'Toole, E., Schwager, A., Hyman, A. A. & Muller-Reichert,T. Nature 444, 619–623 (2006).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Tsou, M. F. & Stearns, T. Nature 442, 947–951 (2006).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Szollosi, D., Calarco, P. & Donahue, R. P. J. Cell Sci. 11, 521–541 (1972).

    CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  10. Uetake, Y. et al. J. Cell Biol. 176, 173–182 (2007).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  11. La Terra, S. et al. J. Cell Biol. 168, 713–720 (2005).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Duensing, A. et al. Oncogene doi:10.1038/sj.onc.1210456 (2007).

  13. Nigg, E. A. Trends Cell Biol. 17, 215–221 (2007).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Dammermann, A. et al. Dev. Cell 7, 815–829 (2004).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Young, A., Dictenberg, J. B., Purohit, A., Tuft, R. & Doxsey, S. J. Mol. Biol. Cell 11, 2047–2056 (2000).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jadranka Loncarek and Alexey Khodjakov are in the Division of Molecular Medicine, Wadsworth Center, Albany NY 12201–0509, USA. khodj@wadsworth.org,

    Jadranka Loncarek & Alexey Khodjakov

  2. Greenfield Sluder is in the Department of Cell Biology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester MA 01605, USA. Greenfield.Sluder@umassmed.edu,

    Greenfield Sluder

Authors
  1. Jadranka Loncarek
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Greenfield Sluder
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Alexey Khodjakov
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Loncarek, J., Sluder, G. & Khodjakov, A. Centriole biogenesis: a tale of two pathways. Nat Cell Biol 9, 736–738 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncb0707-736

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ncb0707-736

Further reading

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing