Back

Coupling mathematical modeling with a novel human intestinal stem cell system to understand feedback regulation during planar cell polarity

Breau, K. A.; Dunahey, E. G.; Fosnocht, H. V.; Magness, S. T.; Elston, T. C.

2025-11-06 systems biology
10.1101/2025.11.05.686808 bioRxiv
Show abstract

The Planar Cell Polarity (PCP) complex regulates many diverse phenotypes. While recent literature has elucidated key mechanisms underlying PCP, a mechanistic understanding of how these components function as a system to drive polarity is lacking. Here, we develop a comprehensive multicellular mathematical model centered around key PCP phosphorylation events, directly simulating the protein interactions that drive PCP. Our model confirms key PCP phenotypes, including robust single-junction asymmetry and multicellular polarity alignment in the absence of extrinsic signals. It predicts unique roles for the two known positive feedback mechanisms and predicts that VANGL-mediated DVL phosphorylation may be an underappreciated negative feedback mechanism. To test model predictions, we employ transgenic primary human intestinal epithelium cultured on biomimetic planar-crypt microarrays (PCMs) as a new platform for studying PCP. Together, our model provides novel insights into the mechanisms that regulate PCP, while our experimental results highlight an unappreciated role for PCP in intestinal biology.

Matching journals

The top 7 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.