SCT: Centrioles Do Networking
“Every second, trillions of times
over, your body pulls off something
that’s nothing short of miraculous.”
This article by CEH Editor David Coppedge was published first in Science & Culture Today.
Centrioles Revealed as Part of a Large Signaling Network
by David Coppedge
Science & Culture Today, October 24, 2025
A 2020 paper published high-resolution images of centrioles that showcase their structural organization: complete with stacks of cartwheel-shaped frameworks, struts, and linkers. It’s hard to look at the models and not infer design.
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Centrioles are microtubule organizing centers. The barrel-shaped structures with radial symmetry, often appearing in mother-daughter pairs positioned at right angles, play important roles in eukaryotic animal cells both during and between cell divisions. During interphase, they form the basal bodies of cilia and flagella, directing the construction of microtubules into those motile organelles. During cell division, they direct the construction of the mitotic spindle that winches sister chromatids apart into the daughter cells. Though present in some lower plants, centrioles are missing in oocytes, conifers, and flowering plants.1
Of all the organelles in a cell, centrioles stick out in electron micrographs like miniature icons of design, appearing as cylinders lengthwise or like tiny 9-petaled flowers end-on. An open-access paper in The EMBO Journal revealed structural details of the “cartwheel-containing region” of a centriole using cryo-electron tomography.2 Readers should browse the image sets to glimpse the beauty and complexity of these stacked “cartwheels” that hold the nine triplets of microtubules in radial position 40° apart like stacked wheels with 9 spokes. Multiple proteins link up at each segment and then continue upward to form the architecturally precise centriole.
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