Related papers: microRNAs may sharpen spatial expression patterns
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…
Rhythmic and sequential segmentation of the embryonic body plan is a vital developmental patterning process in all vertebrate species. However, a theoretical framework capturing the emergence of dynamic patterns of gene expression from the…
Diseases involve complex processes and modifications to the cellular machinery. The gene expression profile of the affected cells contains characteristic patterns linked to a disease. Hence, biological knowledge pertaining to a disease can…
A major challenge in biology is explaining how novel characters originate, however, the molecular mechanisms that underlie the emergence of evolutionary innovations are unclear. Here we show that while gene expression in the uterus evolves…
Homeostasis of protein concentrations in cells is crucial for their proper functioning, and this requires concentrations (at their steady-state levels) to be stable to fluctuations. Since gene expression is regulated by proteins such as…
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…
Recent studies reported complex post-transcriptional interplay among targets of a common pool of microRNAs, a class of small non-coding downregulators of gene expression. Behaving as microRNA-sponges, distinct RNA species may compete for…
We explain the principles of gene expression pattern stabilization in systems of interacting, diffusible morphogens, with dynamically established source regions. Using a reaction-diffusion model with step-function production term, we…
Gene regulatory networks (GRNs) define the regulatory relationships among molecules such as transcription factors, chromatin remodelers, and target genes. GRNs play a critical role in diverse biological processes, including development,…
Gene expression is a noisy process and several mechanisms, both transcriptional and posttranscriptional, can stabilize protein levels in cells. Much work has focused on the role of miRNAs, showing in particular that miRNA-mediated…
During developmental processes such as embryogenesis, how a group of cells fold into specific structures, is a central question in biology that defines how living organisms form. Establishing tissue-level morphology critically relies on how…
A central question in developmental biology is how size and position are determined. The genetic code carries instructions on how to control these properties in order to regulate the pattern and morphology of structures in the developing…
Spatial distributions of morphogens provide positional information in developing systems, but how the distributions are established and maintained remains an open problem. Transport by diffusion has been the traditional mechanism, but…
Embryonic stem cells (ESC) have the potential to self-renew indefinitely and to differentiate into any of the three germ layers. The molecular mechanisms for self-renewal, maintenance of pluripotency and lineage specification are poorly…
The subcellular localization of RNAs, including long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), messenger RNAs (mRNAs), microRNAs (miRNAs) and other smaller RNAs, plays a critical role in determining their biological functions. For instance, lncRNAs are…
Understanding the patterns and causes of phenotypic divergence is a central goal in evolutionary biology. Much work has shown that mRNA abundance is highly variable between closely related species. However, the extent and mechanisms of…
Due to recent breakthroughs in state-of-the-art DNA sequencing technology, genomics data sets have become ubiquitous. The emergence of large-scale data sets provides great opportunities for better understanding of genomics, especially gene…
Morphogenesis of complex body shapes is reproducible despite the noise inherent in the underlying morphogenetic processes. However, how these morphogenetic processes work together to achieve this reproducibility remains unclear. Here, we…
MicroRNAs play critical roles in many physiological processes. Their dysregulations are also closely related to the development and progression of various human diseases, including cancer. Therefore, identifying new microRNAs that are…
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…