Related papers: Emergent thresholds in genetic regulatory networks…
Genes are frequently regulated in complex manners, necessitating modelling approaches which go beyond simple (linear) gene-to-gene interactions and address the modularity of cis-regulatory regions and alternate transcription initiation…
In early development, regulation of transcription results in precisely positioned and highly reproducible expression patterns that specify cellular identities. How transcription, a fundamentally noisy molecular process, is regulated to…
Many biological systems approach physical limits to their performance, motivating the idea that their behavior and underlying mechanisms could be determined by such optimality. Nevertheless, optimization as a predictive principle has only…
The regulatory process of Drosophila is thoroughly studied for understanding a great variety of biological principles. While pattern-forming gene networks are analysed in the transcription step, post-transcriptional events (e.g.…
Gene regulatory network inference uses genome-wide transcriptome measurements in response to genetic, environmental or dynamic perturbations to predict causal regulatory influences between genes. We hypothesized that evolution also acts as…
Precise temporal coordination of gene expression is crucial for many developmental processes. One central question in developmental biology is how such coordinated expression patterns are robustly controlled. During embryonic development of…
We fit the parameters of a differential equations model describing the production of gap gene proteins Hunchback and Knirps along the antero-posterior axis of the embryo of \emph{Drosophila}. As initial data for the differential equations…
Regulatory networks consist of interacting molecules with a high degree of mutual chemical specificity. How can these molecules evolve when their function depends on maintenance of interactions with cognate partners and simultaneous…
Expression of the Drosophila segment polarity genes is initiated by a prepattern of pair-rule gene products and maintained by a network of regulatory interactions throughout several stages of embryonic development. Analysis of a model of…
A fundamental task in developmental biology is to identify the mechanisms which drive morphogenesis. In many cases, pattern formation is driven by the positional information determined by both the gradient of maternal factors and hard-wired…
Embryonic development leads to the reproducible and ordered appearance of complexity from egg to adult. The successive differentiation of different cell types, that elaborates this complexity, result from the activity of gene networks and…
The concept of positional information is central to our understanding of how cells in a multicellular structure determine their developmental fates. Nevertheless, positional information has neither been defined mathematically nor quantified…
Modelling gene regulatory networks not only requires a thorough understanding of the biological system depicted but also the ability to accurately represent this system from a mathematical perspective. Throughout this chapter, we aim to…
Naturally occurring networks exhibit quantitative features revealing underlying growth mechanisms. Numerous network mechanisms have recently been proposed to reproduce specific properties such as degree distributions or clustering…
Intracellular protein patterns govern essential cellular functions by dynamically redistributing proteins between membrane-bound and cytosolic states, conserving their total numbers. This review presents a theoretical framework for…
Embryonic development is driven by spatial patterns of gene expression that determine the fate of each cell in the embryo. While gene expression is often highly erratic, embryonic development is usually exceedingly precise. In particular,…
Gene regulatory networks typically have low in-degrees, whereby any given gene is regulated by few of the genes in the network. They also tend to have broad distributions for the out-degree. What mechanisms might be responsible for these…
We consider evolution of a large population, where fitness of each organism is defined by many phenotypical traits. These traits result from expression of many genes. We propose a new model of gene regulation, where gene expression is…
Natural selection at one site shapes patterns of genetic variation at linked sites. Quantifying the effects of 'linked selection' on levels of genetic diversity is key to making reliable inference about demography, building a null model in…
Gene transcription is a critical step in gene expression. The currently accepted physical model of transcription predicts the existence of a physical limit on the maximal rate of transcription, which does not depend on the transcribed gene.…