ε-Tubulin is an essential component of the centriole

Centrioles and basal bodies are cylinders composed of nine triplet microtubule blades that play essential roles in the centrosome and in flagellar assembly. Chlamydomonas cells with the bld2-1 mutation fail to assemble doublet and triplet microtubules and have defects in cleavage furrow placement and meiosis. Using positional cloning, we have walked 720 kb and identified a 13.2-kb fragment that contains is an element of-tubulin and rescues the Bld2 defects. The bld2-1 allele has a premature stop codon and intragenic revertants replace the stop codon with glutamine, glutamate, or lysine. Polyclonal antibodies to is an element of-tubulin show peripheral labeling of full-length basal bodies and centrioles. Thus, is an element of-tubulin is encoded by the BLD2 allele and is an element of-tubulin plays a role in basal body/centriole morphogenesis.