One day meeting on 26th July ,2019
The Society for Developmental Biology Satellite Symposium hosted the first global specialist PCP meeting since 2013 on ‘Planar Cell Polarity in Development across evolution’
The talks spanned all aspects of PCP biology across Drosophila, Zebrafish, mouse and human.
Charlotte Dean’s talk, ‘The PCP pathway in Lung Development and repair’. highlighted the importance of the PCP pathway for proper lung morphogenesis during embryonic development. It also summarised more recent data looking at the role of Vangl2 in the adult lungs. Making use of Vangl2Lp heterozygotes, which are viable as adults, Charlotte described how dysfunction of the PCP pathway lead to significant morphological and functional defects in the adult lungs, highlighting a role for the PCP pathway beyond embryonic development. This correlates with their findings that in the human population, individuals with a particular Vangl2 SNP who smoke, have significantly lower lung function compared to smokers without this SNP.
