Cilium is a microtubule-based organelle critical for many cellular functions. Its assembly initiates at a basal body and continues as an axoneme that projects out of the cell to form a functional cilium. This assembly process is tightly regulated. However, our knowledge of the molecular architecture and the mechanism of assembly is limited. By applying cryoET, we obtained structures of the inner junction in three regions of the cilium from Tetrahymena: the proximal, the central core of basal body, and the axoneme. We identified several components in the basal body. While a few proteins are distributed throughout the entire length of the organelle, many are restricted to specific regions, forming intricate local interaction networks in the inner junction and bolstering local structural stability. By examining the inner junction in a POC1 knockout mutant, we found the triplet MT was destabilized, resulting in a defective structure. Surprisingly, several axoneme-specific components were found to “infiltrate” into the mutant basal body. Our findings provide molecular insight into cilium assembly at the inner junctions, underscoring its precise spatial regulation.

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