Abstract
Centriole construction, now revealed by crystallography, proteomics, and imaging to be a sophisticated assembly of interlocking bricks, resembles LEGOs—albeit centrioles have remarkable dynamic capabilities, including self-assembly and dis-assembly, kinases and post-translational modifications, self-replication, and still mysterious mechanisms for transmission through each cell cycle and via the gametes during development. Centrioles are created by core proteins that aggregate to form unique ninefold-symmetrical paracrystalline cylinders. The centrosome then coalesces as a cloud of pericentriolar material (PCM) around the centriole. Together they comprise the cell’s microtubule organizing center (MTOC), which governs the shape, functions, and dynamics of the cell’s microtubule (MT) arrays. This includes the meiotic and mitotic spindle apparatus for chromosome segregation, the accuracy of which is crucial for avoiding aneuploidies and resulting cancer, birth defects, or infertility. Centrioles’ replication and transmission mechanisms—and reduplication blocks—across cell cycles and generations, are only now becoming tractable to molecular analysis, which allows research to address questions about spindle assembly with neither centrioles nor centrosomes or de novo centriole formation. Here we discuss the latest insights into centriole and centrosome assembly and function and their transgenerational inheritance.