ABSTRACT
Planar cell polarity signaling directs the polarization of cells within the plane of many epithelia. While these tissues exhibit asymmetric localization of a set of core module proteins, in Drosophila, more than one mechanism links the direction of core module polarization to the tissue axes. One signaling system establishes a polarity bias in the parallel, apical microtubules upon which vesicles containing core proteins traffic. Swapping expression of the differentially expressed Prickle isoforms, Prickle and Spiny-legs, reverses the direction of core module polarization. Studies in the proximal wing and the anterior abdomen indicated that this results from their differential control of microtubule polarity. Prickle and Spiny-legs also control the direction of polarization in the distal wing (D-wing) and the posterior abdomen (P-abd). We report here that this occurs without affecting microtubule polarity in these tissues. The direction of polarity in the D-wing is therefore likely determined by a novel mechanism independent of microtubule polarity. In the P-abd, Prickle and Spiny-legs interpret at least two directional cues through a microtubule-polarity-independent mechanism.
Footnotes
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing or financial interests.
Author contributions
K.A.S. and J.D.A. conceived the study. K.A.S. designed and performed experiments and analyzed the data. K.A.S. and J.D.A. wrote the manuscript.
Funding
K.A.S was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship [1147470]. This work was supported by National Institutes of Health grants [R01GM097081 and P50GM107615] to J.D.A.
Supplementary information
Supplementary information available online at http://bio.biologists.org/lookup/suppl/doi:1242/bio.016162/-/DC1
- Received December 2, 2015.
- Accepted January 5, 2016.
- © 2016. Published by The Company of Biologists Ltd
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium provided that the original work is properly attributed.
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