- Solving 25 years of frustration, Daniel Abbühl managed to tag trypanosome tubulin and to express it in an inducible manner, hence revealing flagellum assembly! A tour-de-force! Preprint here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...Feb 11, 2025 08:53
- In contrast to Chlamydomonas, flagellum growth rate is linear
- Second, the old flagellum is indeed locked during assembly of the new flagellum, as we proposed previously www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... rupress.org/jcb/article/...
- Surprise! Some incorporation takes place in old flagella inherited after cell division!
- Data confirmed with Halo-tag tagging of radial spoke proteins, experiment performed by our collaborator Vladimir Varga @czechacademy.bsky.social Always reinsuring to reach the same conclusion with orthogonal techniques!
- We propose a model where the new flagellum grows in a linear manner while the old one is locked but shrinks slightly, hence requiring unlocking and compensation after cell division, leading to such multicoloured flagella following induction/deinduction/reinduction of tagged tubulin 😉
