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Nature Cell Biology 4, 937–944 (1 December 2002) | doi:10.1038/ncb882

Planar polarity and actin dynamics in the epidermis of Drosophila

Julia A. Kaltschmidt , Nicola Lawrence , V|[eacute]|ronique Morel , Tina Balayo , Beatriz Garc|[iacute]|a Fern|[aacute]|ndez , Anne Pelissier , Antonio Jacinto & Alfonso Martinez Arias

Dorsal closure is a morphogenetic process involving the coordinated convergence of two epithelial sheets to enclose the Drosophila melanogaster embryo. Specialized populations of cells at the edges of each epithelial sheet, the dorsal-most epidermal cells, emit actin-based processes that are essential for the proper enclosure of the embryo. Here we show that actin dynamics at the leading edge is preceded by a planar polarization of the dorsal-most epidermal cells associated with a reorganization of the cytoskeleton. An important consequence of this planar polarization is the formation of actin-nucleating centres at the leading edge, which are important in the dynamics of actin. We show that Wingless (Wg) signalling and Jun amino-terminal kinase (JNK) signalling have overlapping but different roles in these events.