David A. Silva, Xiaomeng Huang, Robert H. Behal, Douglas G. Cole, Hongmin Qin

Cilia and flagella, sensory and motile structures protruding from the cell body, rely on the continuous bidirectional traffic of intraflagellar transport (IFT) particles to ferry flagellar precursors into flagella for assembly. Cells synthesize a large pool of IFT particle proteins in the cell body, but only a small portion engages in active transport within the flagella at any given time. The atypical small G protein Rab-like 5 (RABL5) has been shown to move in an IFT-like manner in the flagella, but its function in ciliogenesis is controversial. In this report, we demonstrate that IFT22, the Chlamydomonas reinhardtii homolog of RABL5, is a bona fide IFT particle complex B subunit. Although the amount of IFT22 remains unaffected by depletion of either complex A or B, depletion of IFT22 leads to a smaller pool of both complex A and B. Strikingly, the smaller cellular pool of IFT particles does not lead to a reduced distribution of IFT particles to flagella. Instead, the amount of IFT particle proteins, including IFT22 itself, increase in the flagella. Moreover, cells over-expressing IFT22 also accumulate IFT particles in their flagella. Taken together, these data indicate that, in C. reinhardtii, IFT22 controls the cellular levels of both complex A and B, thus plays a critical role in determining the cellular availability of IFT particles. In addition, although IFT22 may not directly carry any precursors for flagellar assembly, it controls how many IFT particles participate in ferrying precursors into flagella.