Intraflagellar Transport Protein 20 (IFT20)

IFT20 is composed of 6 exons and is located on human chromosome 17p11.1. This gene is expressed in human brain, lung, kidney and pancreas, and lower expression were also detected in human placenta, liver, thymus, prostate and testis.

Intraflagellar transport (IFT), in which molecular motors and IFT particle proteins participate, is very important in assembling and maintaining many cilia/flagella, such as the motile cilia that drive the swimming of cells and embryos, the nodal cilia that generate left-right asymmetry in vertebrate embryos, and the sensory cilia that detect sensory stimuli in some animals. IFT20 subunit of the particle is localized to the Golgi complex in addition to the basal body and cilia where all previous IFT particle proteins had been found.