Tubulin glycylation controls primary cilia length

Abstract

As essential components of the eukaryotic cytoskeleton, microtubules fulfill a variety of functions that can be temporally and spatially controlled by tubulin posttranslational modifications. Tubulin glycylation has so far been mostly found on motile cilia and flagella, where it is involved in the stabilization of the axoneme. In contrast, barely anything is known about the role of glycylation in primary cilia because of limitations in detecting this modification in these organelles. We thus developed novel glycylation-specific antibodies with which we detected glycylation in many primary cilia. Glycylation accumulates in primary cilia in a length-dependent manner, and depletion or overexpression of glycylating enzymes modulates the length of primary cilia in cultured cells. This strongly suggests that glycylation is essential for the homeostasis of primary cilia, which has important implications for human disorders related to primary cilia dysfunctions, such as ciliopathies and certain types of cancer.