The more, the better: the BICD family gets bigger

Balancing the flow of organelles and molecular complexes to and from the cell periphery is very important, and this is especially true for neurons, which are an extreme example of polarised cells. Neurons need to precisely regulate anterograde and retrograde transport of many cargoes such as mRNA, mitochondria and signalling molecules in time and space. Hence, there is a great deal of interest in identifying adaptor proteins controlling the association of molecular motors with different cargoes. One such class of adaptors is the Bicaudal‐D (BICD) protein family. This issue of the EMBO Journal presents a study by Schlager et al , which describes two new members of the BICD family, Bicaudal‐D‐related protein‐1 and 2 (BICDR‐1 and BICDR‐2), and identifies an essential role for BICDR‐1 in neurons. Bicaudal‐D ( BICD ) (meaning ‘two tails’) was first identified in Drosophila and named after the striking phenotype of its mutant, where embryos have an anterior‐to‐posterior transformation. BICD is an adaptor for dynein‐dependent transport along microtubules. Only one BICD gene is present …