The importance of these early developmental processes to adult homeostasis is apparent from deformation of articular cartilage in mutant animals with non-functional ciliary components intraflagellar transport protein-88 (IFT-88) (Chang et al., 2012), Polaris (McGlashan et al., 2007), divers Bardet–Biedl syndrome (BBS) proteins (Kaushik et al., 2009) and early-onset osteoarthritis in these mutants. Here, IFT88 is linked to osteoarthritis.