When It Is Hard to Get to with Genetics—Planar Cell Polarity under a Chemical Scalpel

Planar cell polarity (PCP) has been under genetic dissection for decades. More and more fundamental developmental processes have been found relying on PCP signaling. However, mechanisms of how PCP signaling generates asymmetry is still unknown. A recent paper in Chemistry & Biology (Sundberg et al., 2011) represents the efforts to decipher the intracellular code of polarity signaling.