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First published online 29 March 2006
doi: 10.1242/dev.02320

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Twinstar, the Drosophila homolog of cofilin/ADF, is required for planar cell polarity patterning

Adrienne Blair¹, Andrew Tomlinson², Hung Pham¹, Kristin C. Gunsalus^3,*, Michael L. Goldberg³ and Frank A. Laski^1,

¹ Department of Molecular Cell and Developmental Biology, and Molecular Biology Institute, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
² College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA.
³ Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853-2703, USA.

Author for correspondence (e-mail: laski{at}mbi.ucla.edu)

Accepted 9 February 2006

Planar cell polarity (PCP) is a level of tissue organization in which cells adopt a uniform orientation within the plane of an epithelium. The process of tissue polarization is likely to be initiated by an extracellular gradient. Thus, determining how cells decode and convert this graded information into subcellular asymmetries is key to determining how cells direct the reorganization of the cytoskeleton to produce uniformly oriented structures. Twinstar (Tsr), the Drosophila homolog of Cofilin/ADF (actin depolymerization factor), is a component of the cytoskeleton that regulates actin dynamics. We show here that various alleles of tsr produce PCP defects in the wing, eye and several other epithelia. In wings mutant for tsr, Frizzled (Fz) and Flamingo (Fmi) proteins do not properly localize to the proximodistal boundaries of cells. The correct asymmetric localization of these proteins instructs the actin cytoskeleton to produce one actin-rich wing hair at the distal-most vertex of each cell. These results argue that actin remodeling is not only required in the manufacture of wing hairs, but also in the PCP read-out that directs where a wing hair will be secreted.

Key words: ADF/cofilin, Twinstar, Planar cell polarity, Lim Kinase, Frizzled, Flamingo, Drosophila

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