Related papers: Transcript length mediates developmental timing of…
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.…
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…
Even under constant external conditions, the expression levels of genes fluctuate. Much emphasis has been placed on the components of this noise that are due to randomness in transcription and translation; here we analyze the role of noise…
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…
Based on previously published experimental observations and mathematical models for Hes1, p53 and NF-kB gene expression, we improve these models through a distributed delay formulation of the time lag between transcription factor binding…
Genes with similar transcriptional activation kinetics can display very different temporal mRNA profiles due to differences in transcription time, degradation rate and RNA processing kinetics. Recent studies have shown that a…
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…
Extensive divergence of transcription factor binding in Drosophila embryos with highly conserved gene expression
The expression of genes usually follows a two-step procedure. First, a gene (encoded in the genome) is transcribed resulting in a strand of (messenger) RNA. Afterwards, the RNA is translated into protein. Classically, this gene expression…
The rate of recombination affects the mode of molecular evolution. In high-recombining sequence, the targets of selection are individual genetic loci; under low recombination, selection collectively acts on large, genetically linked genomic…
Time delays, modelling the process of intracellular gene expression, have been shown to have important impacts on the dynamics of pattern formation in reaction-diffusion systems. In particular, past work has shown that such time delays can…
The X chromosome is present as a single copy in the heterogametic sex, and this hemizygosity is expected to drive unusual patterns of evolution on the X relative to the autosomes. For example, the hemizgosity of the X may lead to a lower…
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…
Cells in a developing embryo have no direct way of "measuring" their physical position. Through a variety of processes, however, the expression levels of multiple genes come to be correlated with position, and these expression levels thus…
Recent whole genome polymerase binding assays have shown that a large proportion of unexpressed genes have pre-assembled RNA pol II transcription initiation complex stably bound to their promoters. Some such promoter proximally paused genes…
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…
Gene expression time delays, modelling the complex biological processes of gene transcription and translation, have been shown to play an important role in cellular dynamics. Time delays, motivated by the gene expression process, can also…
DNA is subject to large deformations in a wide range of biological processes. Two key examples illustrate how such deformations influence the readout of the genetic information: the sequestering of eukaryotic genes by nucleosomes, and DNA…
Orphans are genes restricted to a single phylogenetic lineage and emerge at high rates. While this predicts an accumulation of genes, the gene number has remained remarkably constant through evolution. This paradox has not yet been…
During embryonic development, a complex organism is formed from a single starting cell. These processes of growth and differentiation are driven by large transcriptional changes, which are following the expression and activity of…