Related papers: microRNAs may sharpen spatial expression patterns
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…
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…
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,…
Background: The evolution of microRNA regulation in metazoans is a mysterious process: MicroRNA sequences are highly conserved among distal organisms, but on the other hand, there is no evident conservation of their targets. Results: We…
Small non-coding RNAs can exert significant regulatory activity on gene expression in bacteria. In recent years, substantial progress has been made in understanding bacterial gene expression by sRNAs. However, recent findings that…
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…
Morphogen profiles play a vital role in biology by specifying position in embryonic development. However, the factors that influence the shape of a morphogen profile remain poorly understood. Since morphogens should provide precise…
MicroRNAs are endogenous non-coding RNAs which negatively regulate the expression of protein-coding genes in plants and animals. They are known to play an important role in several biological processes and, together with transcription…
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…
Co-localization of networks of genes in the nucleus is thought to play an important role in determining gene expression patterns. Based upon experimental data, we built a dynamical model to test whether pure diffusion could account for the…
Several studies highlighted the relevance of extrinsic noise in shaping cell decision making and differentiation in molecular networks. Experimental evidences of phenotypic differentiation are given by the presence of bimodal distributions…
Complex spatial and temporal patterns of gene expression underlie embryo differentiation, yet methods do not yet exist for the efficient genome-wide determination of spatial expression patterns during development. In situ imaging of…
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…
The processes, resulting in the transcription of RNA, are intrinsically noisy. It was observed experimentally that the synthesis of mRNA molecules is driven by short, burst-like, events. An accurate prediction of the protein level often…
During tissue development, patterns of gene expression determine the spatial arrangement of cell types. In many cases, gradients of secreted signaling molecules - morphogens - guide this process. The continuous positional information…
Many cellular responses to surrounding cues require temporally concerted transcriptional regulation of multiple genes. In prokaryotic cells, a single-input-module motif with one transcription factor regulating multiple target genes can…
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…
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…
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…
Over the past few years, microRNAs (miRNAs) have emerged as a new prominent class of gene regulatory factors that negatively regulate expression of approximately one-third of the genes in animal genomes at post-transcriptional level.…