It’s been more than a week since the 47th annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology. I’m finally getting around to blogging about it, with my editing deadlines for the January issue out of the way.

I only made it to the last day of the meeting but I wish I had gone to more. Just that one day was rich icool images and ideas.

My favorite: The primary cilium. Nearly every cell in our body has a single specialized cilium. I had barely heard of it. In my defense, an older cell biologist, who has been around for a while, told me that he didn’t know much about it either. The meeting convinced me that this structure has languished in obscurity for too long.

The late-breaking poster session alone had seven abstracts on the primary cilium. Those abstracts implicated the cilium in coordinating several types of cell signaling events in embryonic stem cells, cancer cells and fibroblasts, common cells that make connective tissue. Apparently the appendage can act as a little cellular sensor.

The primary cilium is not just for cell biologists. A study by Klaus Piontek, Gregory Germino and collegues in this month’s issue shows how defects in the cilium lead to kidney disease. See also the News and Views by Emily Kim and Gerd Walz.

Another recent study, in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, examines how the cilium contributes to setting up the left-right asymmetry of organs. Individuals with defective primary cilia are susceptible to heterotaxy—in which organs are distributed randomly on the left and right sides.

I left my day at the meeting with renewed enthusiasm for cell biology—the wellspring of biomedical advance.

If you’d like to read a real blog on the meeting, see one by Brendan Maher for Nature News:

Join Erika Check at the American Society for Cell Biology meeting in San Diego, 9-13 December. She’ll be blogging about it here.

Join Erika Check at the American Society for Cell Biology meeting in San Diego, 9-13 December. She’ll be blogging about it here.