Related papers: Morphogenesis at criticality?
In a developing embryo, information about the position of cells is encoded in the concentrations of "morphogen" molecules. In the fruit fly, the local concentrations of just a handful of proteins encoded by the gap genes are sufficient to…
The body plan of the fruit fly is determined by the expression of just a handful of genes. We show that the spatial patterns of expression for several of these genes scale precisely with the size of the embryo. Concretely, discrete…
We present a theory of pattern formation in growing domains inspired by biological examples of tissue development. Gradients of signaling molecules regulate growth, while growth changes these graded chemical patterns by dilution and…
Gene regulatory network (GRN)-based morphogenetic models have recently gained an increasing attention. However, the relationship between microscopic properties of intracellular GRNs and macroscopic properties of morphogenetic systems has…
Embryonic development involves pattern formation characterized by the emergence of spatially localized domains characterized by distinct cell fates resulting from differential gene expression. The boundaries demarcating these domains are…
Whereas the relationship between criticality of gene regulatory networks (GRNs) and dynamics of GRNs at a single cell level has been vigorously studied, the relationship between the criticality of GRNs and system properties at a higher…
Cell differentiation is an important process in living organisms. Differentiation is mostly based on binary decisions with the progenitor cells choosing between two specific lineages. The differentiation dynamics have both deterministic and…
MicroRNAs are extensively known for post-transcriptional gene regulation and pattern formation in the embryonic developmental stage. We explore the origin of these spatio-temporal patterns mathematically, considering three different motifs…
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 precise layout of gene expression patterns is a crucial step in development. Formation of a sharp boundary between high and low expression domains requires a genetic mechanism which is both sensitive and robust to fluctuations, a demand…
Many-variable differential equations with random coefficients provide powerful models for the dynamics of many interacting species in ecology. These models are known to exhibit a dynamical phase transition from a phase where population…
Morphogens are proteins, often produced in a localised region, whose concentrations spatially demarcate regions of differing gene expression in developing embryos. The boundaries of expression must be set accurately and in proportion to the…
In genetic networks, information of relevance to the organism is represented by the concentrations of transcription factor molecules. In order to extract this information the cell must effectively "measure"' these concentrations, but there…
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…
In complex systems, external parameters often determine the phase in which the system operates, i.e., its macroscopic behavior. For nearly a century, statistical physics has extensively studied systems' transitions across phases,…
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…
Development in multi-cellular organisms is marked by a high degree of spatial organization of the cells attaining distinct fates in the embryo. We show that receptor-ligand interaction between cells in close physical proximity adaptively…
The emergence of complex patterns of organization close to the Cambrian boundary is known to have happened over a (geologically) short period of time. It involved the rapid diversification of body plans and stands as one of the major…
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…
Flocks of birds exhibit a remarkable degree of coordination and collective response. It is not just that thousands of individuals fly, on average, in the same direction and at the same speed, but that even the fluctuations around the mean…