Planar cell polarity (PCP) is the term given to global cell polarization, such as the alignment of mammalian body hair along the anterior-posterior axis or the orientation of steriocilia bundles in the inner ear. VANGL2 is a PCP protein that is involved in the transmission of directional cues to align either individual cells within an epithelial sheet or multicellular clusters, which polarize as a group (Devenport and Fuchs, 2008 [PubMed 18849982]).