Cellular interpretation of the long-range gradient of Four-jointed activity in the Drosophila wing

To understand how long-range patterning gradients are interpreted at the cellular level, we investigate how a gradient of expression of the Four-jointed kinase specifies planar polarised distributions of the cadherins Fat and Dachsous in the Drosophila wing. We use computational modelling to test different scenarios for how Four-jointed might act and test the model predictions by employing fluorescence recovery after photobleaching as an in vivo assay to measure the influence of Four-jointed on Fat-Dachsous binding. We demonstrate that in vivo, Four-jointed acts both on Fat to promote its binding to Dachsous and on Dachsous to inhibit its binding to Fat, with a bias towards a stronger effect on Fat. Overall, we show that opposing gradients of Fat and Dachsous phosphorylation are sufficient to explain the observed pattern of Fat–Dachsous binding and planar polarisation across the wing, and thus demonstrate the mechanism by which a long-range gradient is interpreted. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.05789.001