A synthetic planar cell polarity system reveals localized feedback on Fat4-Ds1 complexes
- Tel Aviv University, Israel
- Rice University, United States
Abstract
The atypical cadherins Fat and Dachsous (Ds) have been found to underlie planar cell polarity (PCP) in many tissues. Theoretical models suggest that polarity can arise from localized feedbacks on Fat-Ds complexes at the cell boundary. However, there is currently no direct evidence for the existence or mechanism of such feedbacks. To directly test the localized feedback model, we developed a synthetic biology platform based on mammalian cells expressing the human Fat4 and Ds1. We show that Fat4-Ds1 complexes accumulate on cell boundaries in a threshold-like manner and exhibit dramatically slower dynamics than unbound Fat4 and Ds1. This suggests a localized feedback mechanism based on enhanced stability of Fat4-Ds1 complexes. We also show that co-expression of Fat4 and Ds1 in the same cells is sufficient to induce polarization of Fat4-Ds1 complexes. Together, these results provide direct evidence that localized feedbacks on Fat4-Ds1 complexes can give rise to PCP.
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Israel Science Foundation (545/14)
- Olga Loza
- Nadav Gordon-Bar
- Liat Amir-Zilberstein
- Yunmin Jung
- David Sprinzak
The funders had no role in study design, data collection and interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Copyright
© 2017, Loza et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
Metrics
-
- 2,261
- views
-
- 403
- downloads
-
- 19
- citations
Views, downloads and citations are aggregated across all versions of this paper published by eLife.
Download links
A two-part list of links to download the article, or parts of the article, in various formats.
Downloads (link to download the article as PDF)
Open citations (links to open the citations from this article in various online reference manager services)
Cite this article (links to download the citations from this article in formats compatible with various reference manager tools)
A synthetic planar cell polarity system reveals localized feedback on Fat4-Ds1 complexes
eLife 6:e24820.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.24820
