iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Alan Brown @alanbrownhms.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Reasoning that these linkers might matter for respiratory health, we teamed up with Heymut Omran's lab to screen 489 people with suspected primary ciliary dyskinesia (PCD) – an inherited respiratory disease – and found four families with variants in ECT2L or DZANK1

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Alan Brown @alanbrownhms.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

TEM, SEM, and high-speed videos showed that when either protein is lost, TZ architecture collapses, cilia develop swollen tips, and mucus transport stops. Deleting ECT2L in stem-cell-derived airway cells did the same. We think this is the first demonstration that TZ defects can cause PCD.

Schematic showing that the loss of linker proteins can impede mucus clearance

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Alan Brown @alanbrownhms.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Led by Haixia Zhou and Lea Terbeck, and only possible through international collaboration with the Omran, Hawkins, and @centriolelab.bsky.social labs. We thank our funding agencies, everyone who helped with this project, and the families who took part.

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