Putting ARL13B in Its Place: Ciliary Localization and Body Weight Regulation

For decades, central regulation of body weight has been framed around peptide ligands, neuronal populations, and circuits. Primary cilia add an essential spatial dimension. A neuron may express the right receptor and sit in the right circuit yet still fail to interpret metabolic cues if the relevant signaling machinery is not assembled at the correct subcellular location. In this issue of Diabetes, Terry et al. (1) use ADP-ribosylation factor-like 13B (ARL13B) to make this point with unusual genetic precision: the cilium is not merely present or absent but molecularly organized, and that organization is required for the normal control of food intake, adiposity, and glucose homeostasis.



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