Intraflagellar transport (IFT) is a microtubule-based system that supports the assembly and maintenance of cilia. The dysfunction of IFT leads to ciliopathies of variable severity. Two of the IFT-B components are the paralogue proteins TTC30A and TTC30B. To investigate whether these proteins constitute redundant functions, CRISPR/Cas9 was used to generate single TTC30A or B and double-knockout hTERT-RPE1 cells. Ciliogenesis assays showed the redundancy of both proteins while the polyglutamylation of cilia was affected in single knockouts. The localization of other IFT components was not affected by the depletion of a single paralogue. A loss of both proteins led to a severe ciliogenesis defect, resulting in no cilia formation, which was rescued by TTC30A or B. The redundancy can be explained by the highly similar interaction patterns of the paralogues; both equally interact with the IFT-B machinery. Our study demonstrates that a loss of one TTC30 paralogue can mostly be compensated by the other, thus preventing severe ciliary defects. However, cells assemble shorter cilia, which are potentially limited in their function, especially because of impaired polyglutamylation. A complete loss of both proteins leads to a deficit in IFT complex B integrity followed by disrupted IFT and subsequently no cilia formation.
Keywords: CRISPR/Cas9; IFT; TTC30 paralogues; affinity proteomics; cilia; polyglutamylation.