Meeting Report
MEETING REPORT Exploring the pole: an EMBO conference on centrosomes and spindle pole bodies Sue L. Jaspersen and Tim Stearns The centrosome and spindle pole body community gathered for its triennial meeting from 12–16 September, 2008 at EMBL in Heidelberg (Germany). Sponsored by the EMBO, the conference on Centrioles are short, cylindrical structures in constituent proteins, and the identification centrosomes and spindle pole bodies was which the walls of the cylinder are made up of of those that are key functional components, organized by Trisha Davis, Susan Dutcher, nine specialized triplet microtubules. This elegant as opposed to hangers-on that use the centro- Michael Knop, Robert Palazzo, Elmar Schiebel nine-fold symmetry is absolutely conserved and some as a cellular assembly point. At the first and Kip Sluder. This was the fourth meeting gives centrioles their characteristic ‘pinwheel’ meeting twelve years ago, John Kilmartin’s in a series that started in 1996 and, as with the appearance in cross-section. Separate from their mass-spectrometry analysis of the SPB4 was previous meetings1–3, was an occasion to cel- role as a focus of PCM, centrioles also nucleate the a prescient first glimpse of the cornucopia of ebrate present accomplishments and contem- ciliary axoneme, imparting their nine-fold sym- centrosome proteins that would soon emerge plate the future. Below we summarize some of metry to this structure as well. A centriole at the from similar work on centrosomes, centrioles the major themes that emerged. base of a cilium is referred to as a basal body. and cilia. Whereas we once had the sense of The centrosome, with its pair of centrioles, having hold of only the trunk, leg or tail of the Centrosome 101 duplicates once per cell cycle at the G1/S tran- proverbial centrosomal elephant, new results Microtubules and their constellation of asso- sition so that a cell will have exactly two cen- are revealing a much more complete picture of ciated proteins and structures are strongly trosomes during mitosis.
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