Regulation of Vertebrate Planar Cell Polarity

• Main Author: Trinh, Jason
• Other Authors: Ciruna, Brian Garrett
• Language: en_ca
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: Polarity; Development; 0307; 0379
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/18966

Planar cell polarity (PCP) provides positional information to a field of cells, coordinating the orientation of polarized structures or the direction of polarized cell movements. An evolutionarily conserved signalling pathway regulates PCP, however, the cue that establishes PCP is unknown. There is a strong precedent for Wnt signalling to act as the cue to establish PCP. Here I perform in vivo assays of cell polarity to examine the role of non-canonical Wnt signalling in regulating PCP, using zebrafish neural progenitor cells and asymmetric membrane localization of GFP-Prickle (a PCP cytoplasmic effector molecule) as a model system. My preliminary evidence suggests Wnt4a provides positional information to cells in the neural tube. In addition, using a membrane-yeast-two-hybrid approach to discover novel regulators of PCP, I identified Ring Finger 41 as a new binding partner to Van-gogh-like-2 (an essential PCP signalling molecule) and a novel regulator of vertebrate PCP.