Is a persistent global bias necessary for the establishment of planar cell polarity?

Fischer, Sabine; Houston, Paul; Monk, Nick A.M.; Owen, Markus R.

Abstract

Planar cell polarity (PCP) — the coordinated polarisation of a whole field of cells within the plane of a tissue — relies on the interaction of three modules: a global module that couples individual cellular polarity to the tissue axis, a local module that aligns the axis of polarisation of neighbouring cells, and a readout module that directs the correct outgrowth of PCP-regulated structures such as hairs and bristles. While much is known about the molecular components that are required for PCP, the functional details of—and interactions between—the modules remain unclear. In this work, we perform a mathematical and computational analysis of two previously proposed computational models of the local module (Amonlirdviman et al., Science, 307, 2005; Le Garrec et al., Dev. Dyn., 235, 2006). Both models can reproduce wild-type and mutant phenotypes of PCP observed in the Drosophila wing under the assumption that a tissue-wide polarity cue from the global module persists throughout the development of PCP. We demonstrate that both models can also generate tissue-level PCP when provided with only a transient initial polarity cue. However, in these models such transient cues are not sufficient to ensure robustness of the resulting cellular polarisation.

Citation

Fischer, S., Houston, P., Monk, N. A., & Owen, M. R. (2013). Is a persistent global bias necessary for the establishment of planar cell polarity?. PLoS ONE, 8(4), 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0060064

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 23, 2013
• Publication Date: Apr 8, 2013
• Deposit Date: Aug 26, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 26, 2015
• Journal: PLoS ONE
• Electronic ISSN: 1932-6203
• Publisher: Public Library of Science
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 8
• Issue: 4
• Article Number: e60064
• Pages: 1-12
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0060064
• Keywords: Planar cell polarity, cellular polarisation, embryo development
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/714573
• Publisher URL: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0060064
• Contract Date: Nov 23, 2018