Related papers: Finding the last bits of positional information
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…
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…
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…
In many developmental systems, cells differentiate into a tissue by reading out morphogen concentration fields, a process fundamentally limited by noise. How much can the precision of this process be improved by nonlocal information, e.g.,…
Spatial patterns in the early fruit fly embryo emerge from a network of interactions among transcription factors, the gap genes, driven by maternal inputs. Such networks can exhibit many qualitatively different behaviors, separated by…
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…
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…
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…
Based on a non-equilibrium mechanism for spatial pattern formation we study how position information can be controlled by locally coupled discrete dynamical networks, similar to gene regulation networks of cells in a developing…
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…
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…
We typically think of cells as responding to external signals independently by regulating their gene expression levels, yet they often locally exchange information and coordinate. Can such spatial coupling be of benefit for conveying…
A key feature of many developmental systems is their ability to self-organize spatial patterns of functionally distinct cell fates. To ensure proper biological function, such patterns must be established reproducibly, by controlling and…
Proteins employ the information stored in the genetic code and translated into their sequences to carry out well-defined functions in the cellular environment. The possibility to encode for such functions is controlled by the balance…
During embryonic development, differentiating cells respond via gene expression to positional cues from morphogen gradients. While gene expression is often highly erratic, embryonic development is precise. We show by theory and simulations…
A big challenge in current biology is to understand the exact self-organization mechanism underlying complex multi-physics coupling developmental processes. With multiscale computations of from subcellular gene expressions to cell…
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…
Understanding the rules underlying organismal development is a major unsolved problem in biology. Each cell in a developing organism responds to signals in its local environment by dividing, excreting, consuming, or reorganizing, yet how…
Search for possible relationships between phylogeny and ontogeny is one of the most important issues in the field of evolutionary developmental biology. By representing developmental dynamics of spatially located cells with gene expression…
In order to survive, reproduce and (in multicellular organisms) differentiate, cells must control the concentrations of the myriad different proteins that are encoded in the genome. The precision of this control is limited by the inevitable…