The vertebrate brain arises from a tube-like structure made from polarised neuroepithelial cells. These have a strict apico-basal orientation; they align their apical ends along a centrally located lumen. This organisation is important for later neurogenesis and there is an emerging concept that defects in apicobasal polarity might play a role in the loss of tissue integrity during disease. My lab uses optogenetics and live confocal imaging of the zebrafish neural tube to study how the polarity of individual cells drives the organisation of a whole vertebrate brain. We use a new optogenetic approach to manipulate polarity, signalling and division in individual cells, in vivo, using light. This allows us to explore how cell polarity and division are linked during development such that cells can divide without disrupting the strict organization of the tissue. We also use this approach to investigate whether apico-basal polarity dysregulation is a cause or consequence of tissue disruption
