Tomoharu Kanie
University of Oklahoma-Health Sciences Center, OK·Biology
Most human cells carry a single primary cilium, a small, non-moving antenna on the cell surface. It detects outside signals through receptors that gather in its membrane.
- Fields
Biology
Biochemistry
Genetics
- Topics
primary cilium
cilia
ciliogenesis
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Isolate the ciliary vesicle using RAB34, a vesicle-marking switch protein, and NCS1, which captures the vesicle at the cilium base, and identify the vesicle's lipid and protein composition.
- Track ciliary vesicles from the moment they appear in cells to determine where in the cell the membrane for the primary cilium comes from.
- Screen for regulators that control how the ciliary vesicle is generated and transported to the mother centriole during early cilium formation.
More about the research
When cilia are built or work incorrectly, the result is a group of disorders called ciliopathies, which include obesity and retinal degeneration. The cilium must be taken apart before a cell divides and rebuilt afterward. Yet the first steps of building it are still poorly understood, in part because researchers have lacked good markers for the key membrane structure involved.
Why it matters
Faulty primary cilia cause ciliopathies, disorders that include obesity and retinal degeneration. By explaining how cilium construction begins, this work could reveal the root causes of these diseases. That knowledge may eventually point to ways to address them in patients.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Tamara Caspary
Emory University, GA·Genetics
Define the ciliary cAMP signaling signature in kidney epithelial cells that express only a cilia-excluded variant of ARL13B, a small GTPase concentrated in primary cilia.
Visvanathan Ramamurthy
West Virginia University, WV·Neuroscience
Identify the best AAV gene therapy regimen for PROM1-associated blindness, delivering working gene copies with a harmless virus in animal models that mimic the disease and measuring retinal light responses by electrophysiology.
Helen Willsey
University of California-San Francisco, CA·Neuroscience·Early-career
Determine how SYNGAP1 gene dosage affects cilia formation and Hedgehog signaling in human neural progenitor cells before synapses form, and how this changes their proliferation and differentiation.
The school
University of Oklahoma-Health Sciences Center: 11 labs on PI Pages, $474M a year on research, 31 research doctorates a year.
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