Research in the Adler lab is focused on aspects of cell and tissue polarity. For many years we have studied planar polarity using the wing of Drosophila as a model system. This tissue polarity is manifested by each cell in the wing forming a distally pointing hair. Early work from the lab established that a genetic regulatory pathway (the frizzled pathway) controlled this by restricting the activation of the cytoskseleton to grow the hair to the most distal part of the cell. Work from a number of laboratories has shown that the proteins encoded by frizzled pathway genes accumulate in protein complexes located on either the proximal or distal sides of wing cells. In recent years our research has primarily been focused on downstream members of the pathway, such as frizt, inturned and multiple wing hairs and how these proteins interact and function to locally activate the cytoskeleton.

Jie Yan, David Huen, Terri Morely, Glynnis Johnson, David Gubb, John Roote and Paul N. Adler (2008). The multiple wing hairs gene encodes a novel GBD-FH3 domain containing protein that functions both prior to and after wing hair initiation. Genetics, 180: 219-228.

Taylor, J. and P. N. Adler (2008). Cell Rearrangement and Cell Division Mediate Tissue Level Morphogenesis During Drosophila Imaginal Disc Evagination. Developmental Biology, 313:739-751.

Y. He, K. Emoto, X. Fang, Ren, N., X. Tian, Y-N. Jan and P. N. Adler (2005). Drosophila Mob family proteins interact with the related Tricornered (Trc) and Warts (Wts) kinases. Molecular Biology of the Cell, 16:4139-4152.

S. Collier, H. Lee, R. Burgess and P. N. Adler. (2005). The WD40 repeat protein Fritz links cytoskeletal planar polarity to Frizzled subcellular localization in the Drosophila epidermis. Genetics 169: 2035-2045.