Determination of hair-bundle polarity in the zebrafish's lateral line
The development of mechanosensory epithelia, such as those of the auditory and vestibular systems, results in the precise orientation of mechanosensory hair cells. After division of a precursor cell in the zebrafish's lateral line, the daughter hair cells acquire opposite mechanical sensitivities. Through a combination of theoretical and experimental approaches, we show that Notch1a-mediated lateral inhibition produces a bistable switch that reliably gives rise to cell pairs of opposite polarity. Using a mathematical model of the process, we predict the outcome of several genetic and chemical alterations to the system, which we then confirm experimentally. We show that Notch1a downregulates the expression of Emx2, a transcription factor known to be involved in polarity specification, and acts in parallel with the planar-cell-polarity system to determine the orientation of hair bundles.
