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The assembly of cilia, ciliogenesis, involves complex and conserved mechanisms during which the basal body has to dock onto cell membranes. Studies in the 1960s suggested that in many cell types such docking occurs in the cytoplasm and that cilia are formed within a vesicle before being delivered to the plasma membrane. This intracellular pathway, recently characterized at the molecular level, leads to the formation of a membrane domain at the basis of cilia, the ciliary pocket, which was involved in vesicular trafficking and signaling., (© 2014 médecine/sciences – Inserm.)

To survive within erythrocytes, Plasmodium parasites have to put into place different membrane and sub-cellular compartments in order to import different nutrients and to export proteins/antigens. Infected cells pose not only a major world health risk by killing two million people per year, but also a very interesting cell biology problem, as within the erythrocyte the parasite resides inside a vacuole called the parasitophorous vacuole and as a consequence, it is separated from the blood stream by three membrane barriers, its own plasma membrane, the parasitophorous vacuole membrane and the erythrocyte plasma membrane. In spite of these three barriers the parasite is capable of secreting antigens and importing nutrients, and to do this, it has developed a complex vesicular system that extends into the red blood cell cytoplasm to the plasma membrane. Understanding how the parasite controls this extensive vesicular traffic has driven research into Plasmodium Rabs, whose potential role is discussed.