Related papers: Quantifying the Bicoid morphogen gradient in livin…
Motivation: Spatial pattern formation of the primary anterior-posterior morphogenetic gradient of the transcription factor Bicoid (Bcd) has been studied experimentally and computationally for many years. Bcd specifies positional information…
During early development, the establishment of gradients of transcriptional factors determines the patterning of cell fates. The case of Bicoid (Bcd) in {\it Drosophila melanogaster} embryos is well documented and studied. There are still…
The predetermination, formation and maintenance of the primary morphogenetic gradient (bicoid gradient) of the early Drosophila embryo involves many interrelated processes. Here we focus on a system-biological analysis of the processes of…
Cell fate decisions in multicellular organisms are precisely coordinated, leading to highly reproducible macroscopic outcomes of developmental processes. The origins of this reproducibility can be found at the molecular level during the…
The concentration gradient of the Bicoid morphogen, which is established during the early stages of a Drosophila melanogaster embryonic development, determines the differential spatial patterns of gene expression and subsequent cell fate…
During embryonic development, a spatial pattern is formed in which proportions are established precisely. As an early pattern formation step in Drosophila embryos, an anterior-posterior gradient of Bicoid (Bcd) induces hunchback (hb)…
We propose a new model describing the production and the establishment of the stable gradient of the Bicoid protein along the antero-posterior axis of the embryo of \textit{Drosophila}. In this model, we consider that \textit{bicoid} mRNA…
During development, morphogen gradients precisely determine the position of gene expression boundaries despite the inevitable presence of fluctuations. Recent experiments suggest that some morphogen gradients may be interpreted prior to…
The early fly embryo offers a relatively pure version of the problem of spatial scaling in biological pattern formation. Within three hours, a "blueprint" for the final segmented body plan of the animal is visible in striped patterns of…
Developmental processes in multicellular organisms occur far from equilibrium, yet produce complex patterns with astonishing reproducibility. We measure the precision and reproducibility of bilaterally symmetric fly wings across the natural…
The fundamental biological processes of development of tissues and organs in multicellular organisms is governed by various signaling molecules, which are called morphogens. It is known that spatial and temporal variations in concentration…
The simultaneous expression of the hunchback gene in the numerous nuclei of the developing fly embryo gives us a unique opportunity to study how transcription is regulated in living organisms. A recently developed MS2-MCP technique for…
During embryogenesis tissue layers continuously rearrange and fold into specific shapes. Developmental biology identified patterns of gene expression and cytoskeletal regulation underlying local tissue dynamics, but how actions of multiple…
Morphogen gradients play an essential role in the spatial regulation of cell patterning during early development. The classical mechanism of morphogen gradient formation involves the diffusion of morphogens away from a localized source…
Morphogenesis is the process whereby the body of an organism develops its target shape. The morphogen BMP is known to play a conserved role across bilaterian organisms in determining the dorsoventral (DV) axis. Yet, how BMP governs the…
Transcription factors (TFs) are key regulators of gene expression. Based on the classical scenario in which the TF search process switches between one-dimensional motion along the DNA molecule and free Brownian motion in the nucleus, we…
The first cell fate decisions in the developing fly embryo are made very rapidly : hunchback genes decide in a few minutes whether a given nucleus follows the anterior or the posterior developmental blueprint by reading out the positional…
The fundamental processes of biological development are governed by multiple signaling molecules that create non-uniform concentration profiles known as morphogen gradients. It is widely believed that the establishment of morphogen…
Gene expression levels are important molecular quantitative traits that link genotypes to molecular functions and fitness. In Drosophila, population-genetic studies in recent years have revealed substantial adaptive evolution at the genomic…
Deciphering how genes interpret information from the concentration of transcription factors (TFs) within the cell nucleus remains a fundamental question in gene regulation. Recent advancements have unveiled the heterogeneous distribution of…