Planar cell polarity aligns epithelial migration to coordinate intestinal architecture and functional zonation.

Epithelial-specific loss of planar cell polarity components Vangl1/2 and Dvl2 in postnatal mouse intestine shifts migration from random to linear, aligning protrusions and integrins to form villus ribbons.

• Why it matters: Epithelial collective migration must be coordinated with functional specialization, but the mechanism linking tissue-scale movement to zonation during development was unclear.
• What they did: In mice, the study defined PCP as a master coordinator and used epithelial-specific loss of Vangl1/2 and Dvl2 to test effects on actin-based basal protrusions and basement membrane integrin polarization.
• The result: Disrupting migration coherence perturbs transcriptional and functional zonation, expanding specialized metabolic domains beyond their spatial boundaries and linking migration pattern to compartmentalization.